A ringfort once occupied the upper slope of a north-south ridge here in County Wexford, its circular enclosure measuring roughly thirty metres across, but the only evidence that survives above ground level does so only when the conditions are right, and only from the air.

What aerial photographs have revealed is a cropmark, the kind of ghostly imprint that appears in fields of grain or grass during dry summers when buried features affect how the soil retains moisture, causing the vegetation above them to grow slightly differently from the surrounding crop. In this case, the outline of a single fosse, a defensive ditch, traces a circular path on the east-facing slope, leaving the faint suggestion of what was once a rath. A rath is the most common type of early medieval Irish enclosure, typically a farmstead surrounded by one or more earthen banks and ditches, occupied broadly between the sixth and twelfth centuries. The Kilscanlan example appears to have had just one such enclosure, and a faint one at that, placing it towards the modest end of the rath spectrum. Its position near the top of a ridge, facing east, is consistent with the siting preferences seen at many comparable sites across Leinster, where elevated ground offered drainage, visibility, and a degree of natural advantage.