It measures approximately 35 metres north to south and 30 metres east to west, a modest enough footprint, yet its presence on that early map is the clearest surviving evidence of where boats once came in before the village acquired the infrastructure it has today.

This earlier quay served Ballyvaghan before a more substantial quay wall, running SW-NE and stretching around 120 metres in length, was constructed some 20 metres to the northwest. The older structure was effectively superseded and has since faded from view, surviving now only as a cartographic ghost on a map drawn when the quay was presumably still in use or at least still remembered. The 1840 survey captured it at precisely the moment it was becoming obsolete, which is perhaps why the marking is described as faint: a feature beginning to lose its purpose even as it was being recorded.