First recorded on the 1839 Ordnance Survey six-inch map and still visible on the 1947 revision, this earthwork monument was typical of the defensive structures built by Anglo-Norman settlers in medieval Ireland. The site was defined by a fosse, or defensive ditch, roughly four metres wide that would have originally surrounded a raised platform where a timber or stone building likely stood.

By the 1960s, local historian Barry noted that the monument had been levelled within the previous decade, with the land converted to tillage and planted with maize. Though the physical earthworks had vanished from the landscape, the site’s footprint remained etched into the soil. An aerial photograph captured on 13 July 1989 revealed the moated site as a distinctive cropmark; a ghostly outline where centuries of human activity had altered the soil composition, causing crops to grow differently along the lines of the ancient fosse.

Today, satellite imagery from June 2017 shows little trace of this once-prominent medieval feature to the casual observer. Yet beneath the surface, the archaeological remains persist, a hidden chapter of Kilkenny’s Norman heritage waiting in the fields of Raheenapisha. These moated sites, once scattered across the Irish countryside, served as fortified farmsteads for colonising families, combining agricultural function with defensive necessity in an often contested landscape.