This square enclosure, measuring approximately 60 metres on each side, was first recorded on the 1842 Ordnance Survey map, which depicted it with distinctive hachured markings; a cartographic technique used to show earthworks and embankments. The site sits on a north-facing slope in what is now pasture land, though centuries of agricultural activity have left it almost completely levelled, visible today only as the faintest of rises in the landscape.

The original layout included several notable features that hint at its former importance. A lime kiln once stood in the southeast corner of the enclosure, essential for producing mortar and improving agricultural land in medieval and post-medieval Ireland. The western edge of the site has been partially cut away by a later roadway, which disrupted the original defensive perimeter. Just beyond this road truncation, at what would have been the northwest corner, a spring well provided a crucial water source for the site’s inhabitants; a strategic placement that ensured access to fresh water whilst maintaining the defensive integrity of the main enclosure.

First catalogued by historian E.M. Barry in 1981 and later included in the Archaeological Inventory of County Cork, this moated site represents a type of fortified farmstead that was particularly common in Anglo-Norman areas of medieval Ireland. These sites, typically dating from the 13th to 15th centuries, consisted of raised platforms surrounded by water-filled moats and earthen banks, providing both defence and status for prosperous farming families. Though time has softened its edges and filled its moats, Coolmahane’s enclosure remains an important archaeological record of how medieval communities shaped and defended their landscape.