Historical maps from the 19th and early 20th centuries show this defensive enclosure as a rectangular earthwork measuring approximately 45 metres north to south and 25 metres east to west, with the northern end becoming distinctly rounded by the time of the 1905 Ordnance Survey. Though the visible banks are gone, the site hasn’t entirely vanished; aerial photography from 1977 captured the ghostly outline of the former earthwork as a soilmark, whilst rushes and waterlogged ground to the south likely mark where the protective fosse, or water-filled ditch, once encircled the site.

Moated sites like this one were typically constructed by Anglo-Norman colonists or prosperous farmers during the 13th and 14th centuries as fortified homesteads. The rectangular platform would have been surrounded by a water-filled ditch and an external bank, creating a defendable space for a timber hall and associated buildings. These sites represent a fascinating middle ground between the stone castles of the nobility and the undefended settlements of ordinary folk, offering their inhabitants security whilst demonstrating their social status and economic success in medieval Ireland.

The Cooliney moated site doesn’t stand alone in the landscape; another ringfort sits just 40 metres to the west, suggesting this area has been strategically important for centuries. Whilst the physical remains have been largely erased by modern farming, the site continues to tell its story through more subtle signs: the persistent dampness that reveals old ditches, the soil discolouration visible from above, and its careful documentation in Barry’s 1981 survey and the Archaeological Inventory of County Cork. These traces remind us that even levelled monuments can retain their archaeological significance and continue contributing to our understanding of medieval settlement patterns in North Cork.