The Ordnance Survey six-inch map of this part of County Limerick shows the feature clearly, its regular geometry sitting just to the south of Ballynakill House, and it is that very formality which gave the game away to the surveyor. What looks like an archaeological enclosure, the kind of earthwork that might prompt speculation about ringforts or early medieval activity, is almost certainly the legacy of a country house's leisure grounds.

Croquet lawns were a familiar element of the designed landscape around Irish country houses from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, when the game became fashionable among the Anglo-Irish gentry. They required level, carefully bounded ground, and their layouts often survive long after the houses they served have declined or changed hands, preserved in the turf simply because a square patch of managed ground is easy enough to maintain without anyone asking why it is there. The feature at Ballynakill was compiled and recorded by Denis Power, and uploaded to the record in August 2011. The Ordnance Survey depiction was the key piece of evidence suggesting the enclosure's domestic rather than ancient origin, the regularity of its shape pointing toward a garden feature rather than anything older.

The site sits immediately south of Ballynakill House and is currently used as a paddock for horses, which means access would depend entirely on the landowner's permission. The enclosure itself may not announce itself as anything remarkable from a distance; what makes it worth a moment's attention is the way the landscape holds a record of a particular kind of domestic life, the afternoon rituals of a country house, pressed faintly into the ground and legible, if only just, on a map.