Located on a southwest-facing slope amongst the area’s rolling farmland, this roughly square enclosure with rounded corners appears on aerial photographs taken during the Cambridge University Collection of Aerial Photography survey in 1957. Today, visitors to the site would find no trace of the structure at ground level; centuries of agricultural activity have erased any physical remains from view.

Moated sites like this one were typically built between the 13th and 14th centuries, serving as fortified homesteads for Anglo-Norman settlers and wealthy landowners. The moat, which would have been water-filled, provided both defensive capabilities and a display of status in medieval Irish society. These earthwork enclosures usually surrounded a central platform where timber or stone buildings once stood, creating a self-contained settlement that could withstand raids whilst managing the surrounding agricultural lands.

The Millbrook site’s survival as a cropmark offers archaeologists valuable insights into medieval settlement patterns in North Tipperary. When crops grow over buried archaeological features, differences in soil depth and moisture retention cause variations in plant growth, revealing the hidden structures beneath. This particular site forms part of the county’s rich medieval landscape, documented in the Archaeological Inventory of County Tipperary, which catalogues hundreds of similar monuments that tell the story of Ireland’s complex medieval past.