This moated site at Ballyfauskeen, County Limerick, sits approximately 265 metres from the river that separates it from neighbouring Anglesborough. Despite its proximity to this significant waterway, the feature somehow escaped inclusion on the historic Ordnance Survey Ireland maps, those meticulous documents that typically captured even the smallest archaeological curiosities across the Irish landscape.

The site’s rediscovery came about through a rather modern twist of fate. In November 1984, aerial photographers documenting the route for the Bórd Gáis Éireann Curraleigh West to Limerick gas pipeline captured clear images of a rectangular enclosure measuring roughly 22 by 23 metres. These photographs revealed what ground level observation had long obscured; the distinctive outline of what appears to be a medieval moated site, its edges still traceable despite centuries of agricultural activity.

More recently, Google Earth imagery from June 2018 has provided further evidence of this hidden monument, with cropmarks clearly showing the levelled earthwork’s footprint in the pasture. These subtle variations in crop growth, visible only from above during certain conditions, betray the presence of buried features that continue to affect soil moisture and plant development. Martin Fitzpatrick, who compiled this archaeological record in November 2021, notes that such sites represent an important, if understated, part of Limerick’s medieval heritage; remnants of a time when moated homesteads dotted the Irish countryside, providing both status and security to their inhabitants.