The site sits in waterlogged lowland, where centuries of Irish weather have slowly erased its physical presence from the landscape. When archaeologists from University College Galway first documented it in August 1982, they found a modest rectangular earthwork measuring roughly 33 metres from north-northwest to south-southeast and 21 metres across its width.

At the time of that initial survey, the site’s medieval character was still readable in the earth; two banks with a fosse, or defensive ditch, running between them marked out the boundaries of what would have been a fortified homestead. A drainage channel had already cut through the northeastern section, whilst field banks extending from the southwestern outer bank suggested this wasn’t an isolated structure but part of a broader medieval landscape. These moated sites were once common across Ireland, typically built by Anglo-Norman settlers or prosperous Irish families between the 13th and 15th centuries as defended farmsteads.

By 2007, when archaeologists returned to reassess Frenchfort, the site had vanished from view entirely; no surface traces remained visible to mark where this piece of medieval Galway once stood. Though the earthworks have been reclaimed by the boggy ground, the site remains recorded in archaeological surveys, a reminder of the layers of history that lie beneath Ireland’s rural landscapes, even when they’re no longer visible to the casual observer.