It belongs to a category of site known as a cropmark, where the buried remains of a ditch or other feature affect the growth of the plants above, causing subtle but readable differences in colour and height when viewed from altitude. In this case, the outline of a roughly circular enclosure, somewhere between 45 and 50 metres in diameter, emerges clearly against the surrounding field.

What the aerial photographs reveal is a single wide fosse, the term for a defensive ditch surrounding a rath or ringfort, roughly 5 metres across, with a gap on the south-eastern side that almost certainly marks the original entrance. Ringforts were the most common form of enclosed rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically dating from around the sixth to the twelfth century, and thousands survive across the country in varying states of preservation. What makes this one quietly remarkable is precisely its absence from living memory. It sits on a slight rise in the landscape, which would once have given it a modest commanding position, yet the ground offers no visible clue. The site was first identified through a photograph held by the Cambridge University Collection of Aerial Photography, and confirmed again through digital aerial survey work carried out in July 2006.