Somewhere beneath the fields of Ballynakill in County Kildare, the bones of a medieval borough lie unresolved, their precise location still a matter of scholarly debate. The settlement at Cloncurry is not a single, neatly mapped ruin but rather a scatter of evidence spread across the landscape, with researchers unable to agree on exactly where the medieval town stood, or even whether it occupied one site or two.

A borough was established at Cloncurry during the thirteenth century, built on the footprint of a pre-Norman church that had already made the place significant before any Anglo-Norman lord arrived. By the time an Extent of the Manor of Cloncurry was drawn up on 8th November 1304, recording a list of tenants and the manor's component parts, the settlement had accumulated a considerable range of features: an early church site, a motte (an earthen mound castle platform, typically topped with a timber tower), an unclassified castle, a medieval church and graveyard, a friary site, a cross-base, and a hollow-way, the sunken trace of a well-worn medieval road. Researchers Bradley and colleagues, writing in 1986, identified two candidate locations for the main settlement. The first sits near the church and motte. The second, which they considered the more likely, lies roughly 700 metres to the south, near a surviving cross-base. Their case rests on the hollow-way curving through that southern area, and on a 1752 estate map drawn by Netterville for Michael Aylmer's property, which names the zone 'The Green' and shows evidence of settlement strung along the same curving road. In medieval Ireland, a 'green' typically indicated communal open space associated with a town or village, making the place-name itself a quiet piece of evidence. Archaeological work carried out ahead of the Kinnegad-Enfield-Kilcock Motorway Scheme added further fragments to the picture, uncovering possible medieval field boundary ditches, pits, and a building in the area, none of it conclusive on its own, but collectively suggestive of activity that once held this ground together as a functioning place.