This moated site, measuring roughly 23.5 metres east to west and 22 metres north to south, represents a fascinating glimpse into medieval Irish settlement patterns. First recorded on the 1840 Ordnance Survey map as a circular earthwork, it was later depicted in 1897 as rectangular and tree-planted, suggesting significant landscape alterations during the Victorian period when such features were often romanticised as ornamental groves.

The site’s defensive architecture remains partially visible despite centuries of weathering and deliberate landscaping. An earth and stone bank, now mostly reduced to a scarped edge, once enclosed the raised interior platform. This bank survives best at the northwest, northeast, and southwest corners, where it still rises half a metre above the interior level. Surrounding this is a fosse, or defensive ditch, approximately 7.2 metres wide with a 4-metre base, though it’s now only clearly visible along portions of the eastern, southern, and western sides. A causewayed entrance, 2 metres wide, provides access from the southeast; a typical feature of moated sites that allowed controlled entry whilst maintaining defensive capabilities.

Archaeological surveys conducted in 2001 and aerial photography from 2011 to 2018 confirm the monument’s rectangular footprint and tree coverage, whilst another enclosure lies 240 metres to the northwest, hinting at a wider medieval landscape. The site sits just 45 metres from the historic townland boundary with Ballyshane, a proximity that likely reflects the importance of territorial divisions in medieval Ireland. Though now peaceful and overgrown, this moated site once served as a fortified homestead, probably housing a prosperous farming family during the Anglo-Norman period when such defensive earthworks proliferated across the Irish countryside.