Located 130 metres north of Morningstar and 260 metres east of the grand house, this subtle monument reveals itself best from above; aerial photographs from 1967 first captured its ghostly outline, whilst modern satellite imagery shows a rectangular area roughly 40 metres square, defined by a scarp and surrounded by a wide fosse, or defensive ditch, measuring about 8 metres across.

The site bears the hallmarks of a medieval moated site, a type of fortified homestead common in Ireland between the 13th and 15th centuries. These rectangular enclosures, surrounded by water-filled ditches, typically housed timber buildings and served as defensive farmsteads for Anglo-Norman settlers or prosperous Irish families. The presence of a relic watercourse running northwest to southwest just west of the monument would have been ideal for feeding water into the surrounding moat, whilst another rectangular enclosure lying 70 metres to the southeast suggests this area may have hosted multiple medieval settlements.

Curiously, this archaeological feature never made it onto historic Ordnance Survey maps, perhaps overlooked by early surveyors or already too degraded to warrant inclusion. Its proximity to Ballynahinch House raises intriguing questions about continuity of settlement; was this medieval moated site a predecessor to the later grand house, or perhaps an associated landscape feature created during the estate’s heyday? The wet pasture that now covers the site has preserved its earthworks remarkably well, allowing modern aerial photography to reveal what centuries of farming activity couldn’t quite erase.