The site appears only on the 1842 Ordnance Survey 6-inch map, where it was marked as a hachured square enclosure measuring approximately 25 metres on each side. This type of defensive earthwork was typical of Anglo-Norman settlements in Ireland, consisting of a raised platform surrounded by a water-filled moat that would have protected a timber hall or tower house.

The moated site met its end around 1972 when it was levelled, likely for agricultural purposes; a common fate for many of Ireland’s earthwork monuments during the modernisation of farming practices in the twentieth century. Today, visitors to the area might notice only a subtle elevation in the pasture where the medieval structure once stood, a barely perceptible reminder of the defensive homestead that dominated this spot for centuries.

Such moated sites are scattered throughout County Cork and represent an important phase of medieval settlement in Ireland, typically dating from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. They were usually constructed by Anglo-Norman colonists or Gaelicised Norman families who needed defensible farmsteads in what was often contested territory. Though this particular example at Russelhill has been largely erased from the landscape, its documentation in historical maps ensures its place in the archaeological record of medieval Cork.