Not ruined, not overgrown, but genuinely levelled, this earthwork near Darranstown survives now only as a faint circular cropmark, the kind of trace that becomes legible only from the air, when differences in soil moisture cause grass to grow at slightly different rates above buried features. What was once a raised mound has been so thoroughly reduced that it leaves no impression on the ground a walker would notice.

The site sits approximately 190 metres south-west of Darranstown House and 115 metres north of the townland boundary with Knockaunnacreeha. Its cartographic history is telling. Neither the 1840 edition of the Ordnance Survey Ireland six-inch map nor the 1897 twenty-five-inch edition recorded anything at this location, suggesting the feature was either already diminished or simply overlooked during those surveys. It was only on the later Cassini edition of the OSi six-inch map that a small mound appeared, annotated with the word "Mote". A mote, or motte, is the earthen mound at the centre of a motte-and-bailey castle, a form of fortification introduced to Ireland by the Normans from the late twelfth century onwards, typically consisting of a raised platform topped with a timber tower and enclosed by a ditched courtyard. Whether this particular feature was ever part of such a structure is not confirmed by the available record, but the annotation suggests that is how it was understood at the time. By the time aerial orthophotographs were taken between 2005 and 2012, the monument had been levelled entirely, visible only as a cropmark. A Google Earth image from April 2015 shows a possible faint trace of raised dry ground, though even that is tentative.

There is little for a visitor to see on the ground today, which is, in its own way, part of what makes the site worth knowing about. The field is pasture, and the location offers no obvious landmark. Those with access to the OSi orthophotography or Google Earth imagery can at least orient themselves using the cropmark evidence. The record was compiled by Fiona Rooney and uploaded in August 2021, forming part of a broader effort to document monuments that have been lost or are at serious risk, places where the archaeology now exists more reliably in aerial imagery than in the landscape itself.