This moated site at Knocklong West appears today as a raised rectangular platform, measuring 34 metres east to west and 21 metres north to south, defined by a scarp and the remnants of an old defensive ditch along its northern edge. What makes this site particularly fascinating is its unusual design; it originally consisted of two separate rectangular platforms arranged in a north-south line, each surrounded by their own banks and separated by a 3.6-metre-wide fosse.

When the antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westropp surveyed this ‘platform ringfort’ in the early 20th century, he recorded both sections standing between 1.5 and 1.8 metres high and spanning 20 metres in width. The northern platform stretched 21 metres long whilst its southern counterpart measured 16.5 metres, with a defensive ditch 3.6 metres wide encircling the entire complex, though by Westropp’s time it had already begun filling in. The site appears on the Ordnance Survey’s detailed 25-inch maps as a distinctly raised rectangular area, and aerial photographs from as early as 1968 clearly show the southern platform’s outline, which remains visible on modern satellite imagery.

Today, only the southern platform retains any visible surface features; the northern section has been completely levelled, likely through centuries of agricultural activity in the surrounding reclaimed pasture. The site was catalogued by Edmund Barry in 1981 as one of Limerick’s moated sites, a type of fortified residence typically associated with Anglo-Norman settlers of the 13th and 14th centuries. These earthwork enclosures, with their water-filled or marshy ditches, served both defensive and status purposes for their medieval inhabitants, representing a fascinating layer of Ireland’s complex medieval landscape.