When someone took a closer look in 1998, they found a canal aqueduct, its banks lined on both sides with carefully laid stonework, quietly doing whatever it was built to do, or at least trying to.

The structure sits on flat ground at the north-western edge of a turlough, which is a seasonally flooded lake characteristic of the limestone karst landscape of the Burren and its surrounds. Water rises and disappears through the porous rock below, and the ground nearby can remain persistently wet even when the turlough itself has drained. The main section of the canal runs for 245 metres on a north-south axis. To the north it loses its formal character and becomes more of a drain, curving eastward until it reaches the road. The southern end is heavily overgrown. The most plausible explanation for its existence is practical and local: it was likely constructed to carry water away from damp ground and redirect it across the road to the east, managing the waterlogged conditions that the turlough's seasonal behaviour would have created for anyone trying to farm or move through the area. No date of construction is recorded, and the dressed stonework on both faces is the principal evidence that this was a considered piece of engineering rather than a casual drainage ditch.