What you are looking at, if you can make it out at all, is the ghost of two distinct phases of occupation layered one on top of the other, and then largely erased by the mid-twentieth century.

The 1837 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map marks the site as a circular enclosure labelled simply 'Fort', with a structure identified as a castle shown within its bounds. The earthwork itself is likely a rath, the term for a roughly circular enclosed settlement of early medieval Ireland, typically defined by an earthen bank and ditch. At some later point, the rath appears to have been adapted as a bawn, the defensive walled enclosure that typically surrounded a castle or tower house, repurposing the earlier boundary rather than building from scratch. This kind of layered reuse was not uncommon; a ready-made enclosure on elevated ground was a practical asset across very different periods. By 1966, both the castle remains and the enclosure were recorded as having been recently levelled, leaving little above the surface. Even so, a scarp, a low step in the ground marking where the old bank once stood, still traces the perimeter to a maximum height of about one metre, defining the circular outline for those patient enough to read the landscape carefully.