No walls survive, no foundations, nothing that reads as a building in the conventional sense. What archaeologists found instead, during excavations in 2002, were the ghostly signatures of structures long since vanished: stake-holes and post-holes driven into the earth, the remnants of timber uprights that once framed a dwelling or working space, and shallow pits containing spreads of burnt stone.

The burnt stone is worth pausing on. Spreads of fire-cracked rock, found in pits or mounds, are a recurring feature of early Irish archaeology and are generally thought to relate to cooking or industrial heating, though their precise function at any given site is rarely straightforward to determine. Here, their proximity to the moated site adds a layer of interest. A moated site is essentially a medieval farmstead enclosed by a water-filled ditch, a form of settlement common in Ireland between roughly the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, often associated with Anglo-Norman colonisation of the countryside. The habitation evidence found to the west of the Boscabell example suggests that domestic or agricultural activity extended beyond the moat itself, or perhaps predated the formal enclosure. The excavation findings were published by Lennon in 2004, though the site itself leaves no visible trace above ground.