From above, the canopy gives the shape away: a roughly circular enclosure, the kind of feature that disappears entirely at ground level but resolves into something deliberate and ancient when seen from the air.

Enclosures of this type are scattered across the Irish countryside, and their origins vary considerably. Some are the remains of ringforts, the enclosed farmsteads that were the dominant form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically consisting of an earthen bank and ditch surrounding a domestic interior. Others began as burial grounds, ritual sites, or later stock enclosures. What they share is a tendency to survive precisely because generations of farmers have left them alone, sometimes out of practical difficulty, sometimes out of older instinct. The trees that grow over them, self-seeded and undisturbed, become their own kind of monument. The Ballygonnell example was documented photographically in July 2006, when aerial survey work captured its outline in the surrounding pasture.