When the Ordnance Survey mapped this part of County Kilkenny in 1839, the feature was recorded as a possible sand pit, roughly twenty metres north to south and twenty-six metres east to west, with a trackway running north from it before turning west towards a large quarry lined with limekilns. Limekilns were small stone furnaces used to burn limestone into quicklime for agricultural or building purposes, and their presence here suggests the landscape was already being worked intensively for its geology. By the time the OS returned for the 1900 revision, the interpretation had shifted considerably: the same feature, now measured at about thirty metres east to west, was recorded not as an extraction pit but as a small oval enclosure defined by a bank, sitting precisely at the junction of four fields.

The question of what exactly the enclosure represents has only grown more complicated since. Recent satellite imagery shows the feature apparently levelled, with Kilcarrig Quarries pressing in on its southern and western sides, having expanded well beyond the extent shown on the 1900 map. What may survive of the enclosure's southern and western bank has likely been absorbed into the field boundaries that now separate it from the quarry workings. About thirty metres to the south, archaeological excavations uncovered a corn-drying kiln, a type of stone-built structure commonly used in early medieval Ireland to dry grain before milling. Its presence so close to the enclosure adds another layer of interest, suggesting the area saw sustained activity that went well beyond simple quarrying, even if the precise relationship between the kiln and the enclosure remains unclear.