Locals have long called it the "Moat", a term applied across Ireland to earthworks whose original purpose has blurred over time, and the townland itself carries a name that hints at something older: Church Hill, or in Irish, Cnoc an Teampaill, the hill of the church.

When the Ordnance Survey first mapped the area at six-inch scale in 1839, the feature was recorded simply as a small enclosure. By the time a revised map was produced in 1947, it had been recharacterised as a mound, measuring roughly 23 metres north to south and 26 metres east to west. The historian William Carrigan, writing in 1905, noted its presence in the third volume of his history of the Diocese of Ossory, describing it as a green artificial mound to the south of the chapel. The combination of its dimensions and Carrigan's description raises the possibility that this is a barrow, a type of prehistoric burial mound once widespread across the Irish landscape, typically constructed during the Bronze Age to mark the graves of the dead. Whether that identification holds up under closer examination is another matter; the site has not, as far as the available record shows, been excavated or formally confirmed as such. A separate enclosed site lies approximately 110 metres to the south-southwest, suggesting the broader area may have held some significance across a long stretch of time.