The cropmarks, visible in photographs taken by the Cambridge University Collection of Aerial Photography, show a square enclosure surrounded by a defensive ditch, or fosse. Two parallel ditches running east to west along the southern edge suggest an old trackway that once bordered this mysterious field system.

These telltale marks in the crops occur when plants grow differently over buried archaeological features; their roots respond to variations in soil depth and moisture, creating patterns only visible from above. The square shape and surrounding fosse point to either a moated homestead, which would have been a status symbol for minor gentry in medieval Ireland, or simply an enclosed field from centuries past. Moated sites like this one were typically built between the 13th and 17th centuries, serving as fortified farmsteads that offered both protection and a display of social standing.

While the exact history of this particular site remains unclear, it joins hundreds of similar earthworks scattered across the Irish countryside. Many of these medieval enclosures have long since vanished from ground level, ploughed flat by centuries of farming, yet they persist as shadows in the landscape, waiting to tell their stories through the keen eye of aerial archaeology. The site’s reference numbers in the archaeological record (KD037-023002 and KD038-052) ensure that future researchers can locate and study these intriguing remnants of Kildare’s medieval past.