The feature, described as a rectangular enclosure and possibly a moated site, was spotted from the air during survey work carried out by Bord Gáis in 1981 and 1982, when the company was preparing the ground for the Cork to Dublin gas pipeline. A moated site, for those unfamiliar with the term, is typically a low-lying medieval enclosure surrounded by a water-filled or wet ditch, most often associated with Anglo-Norman settlement from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. They are relatively common across the Irish midlands and south-east, but this one has proved elusive ever since it was first noted.

The difficulty is that no trace of the enclosure appears on any satellite or aerial imagery checked between 2005 and 2021, whether through Google Earth, OS Ortho, or Digitalglobe. Whatever the original photograph captured, the landscape has since closed over it. From 2009 onwards the relevant area has been absorbed into a paddock, which may account for some of the change in ground conditions, though it does not fully explain the absence of any visible trace across two decades of imagery. The original Bord Gáis photograph, the only direct evidence for the feature, had not yet been fully reviewed or copied into the file as of mid-2021, meaning that the site rests, for now, on a description derived from a single image that few people have seen.