Though no visible trace remains today, this intriguing earthwork was still prominent enough in the early 19th century to be carefully recorded on the 1838 Ordnance Survey map as a sub-rectangular enclosure. By the time surveyors returned to map the area in 1908, however, the feature had vanished entirely from the landscape, likely ploughed away or deliberately levelled for farming purposes.

The shape captured on that 1838 map offers tantalising clues about what once stood here. The sub-rectangular form strongly suggests this was a moated site; a type of medieval homestead where a manor house or farmstead would have been surrounded by a water-filled ditch for both defence and status. These monuments were particularly popular amongst Anglo-Norman settlers and prosperous farmers between the 13th and 17th centuries. The site’s proximity to Gorteen Castle, just 430 metres to the southeast, hints at a broader medieval landscape where multiple defensive structures once dotted the countryside.

When archaeologists visited in 1977, they found the earthwork had been completely levelled, though they noted it appeared to have encircled the end of a low ridge in what is now well-drained pasture land. Whilst they suggested it might have been a ringfort, an earlier Irish defensive structure, the cartographic evidence points more convincingly towards a moated site. This archaeological puzzle serves as a reminder of how much of Ireland’s medieval heritage has been lost to time and agriculture, surviving only in old maps and field notes compiled by dedicated researchers like Caimin O’Brien, whose work helps preserve the memory of these vanished monuments.