When archaeologists surveyed the area in the 1980s, they documented a rectangular enclosure defined by substantial earthen banks, each measuring 3 to 4 metres wide. These defensive banks were surrounded by outer moats, roughly 2.5 metres wide and 1.5 metres deep, with additional traces of outer banks visible along the southern and eastern sides of the site.

The moated site represented a type of medieval settlement that became common across Ireland between the 13th and 14th centuries, typically associated with Anglo-Norman colonisation. These fortified farmsteads consisted of a raised platform surrounded by a water-filled moat, providing both defence and drainage in what were often marginal agricultural lands. The Carnagh example followed this classic pattern, with its rectangular plan and multiple defensive features suggesting it once housed a substantial dwelling, likely belonging to a prosperous farming family or minor lord.

Unfortunately, agricultural improvements claimed this piece of medieval heritage sometime after 1982. The site was completely levelled and the land converted to reclaimed pasture, erasing all visible traces of the earthworks that had survived for centuries. Today, visitors to the area would find no indication of the moated site that once dominated this small valley; only the archaeological record preserved in Barry’s 1977 survey and the county’s Sites and Monuments Record files remains to tell its story.