The dry weather of recent weeks has led to an early harvest, but not before Louth man, journalist and author Anthony Murphy made yet another ancient discovery in a field of spring barley in Co Meath.
Murphy, during the drought of 2018, made a major discovery near Newgrange when he and a colleague found a 200m henge that had been unrecorded and had never been seen before.
This week, he discovered an unrecorded ringfort near Bellewstown, Co Meath.
“I was driving along, heading home from Four Knocks and I could see a really dry field on the side of a hill.
“I decided to tip on over, I put the drone in the air and fairly quickly I could see a lot of crop markings. A couple of minutes later I spotted the circle – nature doesn’t really do circles,” he told the Irish Farmers Journal.
It looks like a classic ringfort, he said. If it is indeed a ringfort, it dates to around 500 to 1000AD, he said.
Murphy, who previously worked as a sub-editor for the Irish Farmers Journal, said he has lost count of the number of discoveries he has made, but reckons he has found around 250 or so monuments and archaeological features down through the years.
The drought of 2018 and better satellite imagery saw a huge selection of previously unrecorded archaeological monuments uncovered.
Some were bronze age barrows up to 4,000 years old, while others are iron age ringforts and medieval enclosures.
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