A steep-sided gap at the north-east, roughly 3.6 metres wide at the top and narrowing to 2 metres at the base, may mark an original entrance. At first glance it reads like an ancient earthwork, and it would not be out of place as one in this part of Ireland. What sets it apart is the likelihood that it is nothing of the sort.

By the time the Ordnance Survey produced its six-inch maps in 1837, the feature was already being recorded as a tree-ring, the kind of deliberately planted circular clump of trees that was fashionable in eighteenth and nineteenth century estate landscaping across Ireland and Britain. Landowners used them to punctuate parkland, create visual focal points across open ground, and lend a sense of designed order to otherwise agricultural terrain. The estate in question appears to be Belmont House, which sits about 365 metres to the south-west. By the revised twenty-five inch map of 1913, the same feature was being described simply as a circular earthwork, suggesting the trees had gone or the surveyors were recording what they saw on the ground rather than its likely purpose. A possible mound of a rather different, potentially older character lies about 67 metres to the south-west, which adds a layer of ambiguity to the wider landscape. Part of the hillock has been quarried on its western side, and a modern field fence now runs along the eastern scarp.