Though no visible traces remain today, historical records tell a different story. The 1837 Ordnance Survey map shows a distinctive rectilinear earthwork surrounded by trees, suggesting this was once a significant landscape feature. About 200 metres to the northwest, another rectangular earthwork can still be traced, hinting at a broader pattern of historical land use in this gently rolling countryside.

This site represents an intriguing puzzle for archaeologists and historians. It may have originally served as a moated site, a type of medieval homestead surrounded by a water-filled ditch that was particularly popular amongst Anglo-Norman settlers and prosperous Irish families between the 13th and 17th centuries. These defensive structures typically consisted of a raised platform enclosed by a substantial ditch, which would have been filled with water for both protection and status.

By the time it appeared on 19th-century maps, the site had likely been repurposed as a decorative landscape feature, its tree-lined boundaries perhaps marking it as part of a later estate’s designed landscape. Alternatively, some researchers suggest it could have been a tree-lined enclosure created after 1700, never having served a defensive purpose at all. When archaeologists surveyed the area in 1977, they found that centuries of agricultural activity had completely levelled any above-ground remains, leaving only maps and historical memory to mark where this mysterious earthwork once stood.