No stone, no outline, no earthwork rises above the grass. And yet beneath the surface, or at least somewhere within a low mound in this quiet corner of a larger complex of earthworks, the outline of something once stood: a small structure, roughly six and a half metres by four and a half, that may have served as a gateway to the fortified house nearby.

The record of this structure rests almost entirely on a single observation made by Knox in 1911. Writing at a time when the mound still retained some legible form, he recorded what he described as a trace of stone building resembling a small tower, measuring 21 feet by 15 feet. It sat immediately to the north-west of Island House, a fortified house of the kind built during the plantation period and its aftermath, when landowners across Connacht constructed defensible residences enclosed within earthen banks and ditches. Knox's suggestion that the structure might have functioned as a gateway is plausible given its position relative to the house, though the fragmentary nature of what he saw left the interpretation open. In the century or so since that observation, even those faint traces have disappeared entirely.