Found during trial excavations in June 1996, the feature lies directly opposite the ruins of a medieval church in Raheny and sits roughly twenty metres north of the church's own pear-shaped enclosure. An ecclesiastical enclosure is the boundary that typically surrounded an early medieval church site and its associated buildings, often marked by a raised bank, a ditch, or both. Whether this particular ditch belongs to that tradition is, as things stand, an open question.

The feature was discovered at approximately 1.15 metres below ground level and shares its cross-sectional shape with a ditch uncovered during roadworks in 1970, an earlier find recorded by archaeologist Leo Swan. Swan interpreted that earlier ditch as the outer enclosure boundary of the medieval ecclesiastical site at Raheny. The 1996 excavation, reported by Carroll, found something similar, but the team was careful not to draw a firm conclusion. Raheny and its surroundings were a busy and historically significant area throughout the medieval period, and a ditch of this kind could equally have served as a boundary or a defensive feature unconnected to the church. Medieval and post-medieval pottery turned up in disturbed layers close to the feature, which suggests long activity in the area but does not settle the question of the ditch's original purpose.

The medieval church ruins that sit opposite the excavation site are the most visible element of this complex, and they remain accessible to anyone passing through Raheny. The enclosure and ditch are, of course, invisible from the surface, their presence known only through the excavation record. Visitors with an interest in the archaeology would do well to read the site alongside the ruins themselves, bearing in mind that what survives above ground is only a fraction of what the area once contained, and that much of the rest has yet to be fully understood.