Near Dungarvan in County Kilkenny, a small circular enclosure of roughly eleven metres in diameter was detected not through excavation or fieldwork but through a high-altitude aerial photograph taken between 1973 and 1977. By that point, the ground itself had already been reclaimed from scrub, meaning whatever earthwork or feature once defined the circle had been absorbed back into the working landscape. The enclosure endures, in a sense, only as a photographic trace.

Circular enclosures of this kind are a common enough feature of the Irish countryside. Many are the remains of ringforts, the enclosed farmsteads that housed rural families throughout the early medieval period, typically defined by an earthen bank and ditch. At roughly eleven metres across, this example sits at the smaller end of the scale. What makes the Dungarvan site particularly interesting is that it does not stand alone. On the same aerial photograph, a second enclosure was identified approximately twelve metres to the south-east, suggesting the two features may form a related pair. The neighbouring enclosure is actually the more legible of the two in the photograph, its outline registering more clearly against the reclaimed ground, which throws the comparative faintness of this one into relief.