No earthworks broke the surface, no tradition attached itself to the ground, and a geophysical survey carried out in 2005 found nothing of note. It took the mechanical stripping of topsoil during residential construction works in 2019 to reveal that the land at Monalin had been quietly concealing something far older: 133 features of probable archaeological origin, including pits, hearths, postholes, stakeholes, possible kiln features, and a large enclosure of approximately 50 metres in diameter.

Archaeological monitoring of the Phase 5 area was carried out by Liza Kavanagh and Barry Lacey of Irish Archaeological Consultancy Ltd in January and again between April and May 2019. What emerged was a diffuse but telling scatter of activity, with two denser concentrations of features in the northern part of the site that are likely to represent the remains of prehistoric structures. Among the finds were several sherds of coarse, undecorated, poorly fired ceramic containing large grit inclusions, consistent with Late Bronze Age pottery, a period broadly spanning roughly 1200 to 600 BC in Ireland. Two distinct clusters of pits and postholes were identified. The more northerly cluster included short stone-filled linear features, sometimes called slot trenches, which are typically the ground-level traces of timber wall foundations. Approximately 15 metres to the south, a second cluster of pits was filled with charcoal-enriched soils, suggesting burning activity over time. The excavators noted, carefully, that the broader scatter of undated pits, hearths, and spreads across the site means some features within these clusters may belong to entirely different phases of activity, a reminder that archaeological ground rarely tells a single, clean story.