This moated site at Ballygrennan offers excellent views across the County Limerick countryside and sits 340 metres south of an archaeological excavation conducted by Kate Taylor in 2002 as part of the Bord Gáis Éireann Pipeline to the West project. The site’s long history of documentation reveals how our understanding of these ancient structures has evolved through different mapping technologies.

The earliest depiction appears on the 1840 Ordnance Survey map, which shows a large circular earthwork measuring roughly 60 metres across. By the time of the 1897 Ordnance Survey, more detailed mapping revealed the site’s true form: a sub-rectangular enclosure measuring approximately 49.5 metres north to south and 35 metres east to west, surrounded by a bank and ditch. This defensive configuration is typical of Anglo-Norman moated sites, which were built throughout Ireland during the medieval period as fortified homesteads for colonising families.

Though the physical earthworks have been levelled over time, modern aerial photography continues to reveal the site’s ghostly outline. Cropmarks visible in orthoimages from 2005 onwards clearly show the rectangular shape of the former enclosure, whilst Google Earth images from 2018 and 2020 capture its faint impression in the landscape. Perhaps most fascinating is the large, sub-triangular cropmark on the southeast side; this relic field boundary appears to respect the original enclosure’s edge, suggesting the site continued to influence local land divisions long after its abandonment. These aerial views provide archaeologists with valuable insights into medieval settlement patterns that would otherwise be invisible from ground level.