First recorded on the 1839 Ordnance Survey map, this substantial rectangular enclosure once measured approximately 55 metres north to south and 45 metres east to west, surrounded by an earthen bank and an external water-filled ditch, or fosse. Like many such sites across Ireland, it likely served as a defended homestead during the medieval period, when local landowners sought protection behind earthworks and water barriers.

The site met its demise around 1890 when a local farmer, keen to improve his land, levelled the ancient earthworks for top-dressing. According to an account published by Omurethi in 1896, the demolition revealed an unexpected discovery in the north-eastern corner of the rampart: an unflagged chamber filled with blackened barley and ashes. The farmer, undeterred by any superstitious concerns that might have given his neighbours pause, hauled away twenty-seven cartloads of this ancient material and spread it as fertiliser across his fields. His neighbours watched nervously, perhaps expecting some form of supernatural retribution for disturbing the old site, but as Omurethi drily notes, “no ill effects to him or his have resulted”.

Though the physical monument was destroyed over a century ago, modern aerial photography has revealed its ghostly outline. Images captured in 1967 and 1973 show the cropmark of the broad fosse still visible from above, where different growing conditions in the filled-in ditch create patterns in the vegetation that betray the site’s former boundaries. Today, no surface traces remain of this once-imposing structure; only these aerial glimpses and historical records preserve the memory of Ardscull’s lost moated site.