Diggers arrived in 2013 ahead of a proposed development, took a careful look, and came away with seashells and animal bone but nothing that would allow anyone to pin a century to the place. The enclosure itself is substantial, running roughly 60 metres north to south and 80 metres east to west, enclosed by a ditch some 3 metres wide and 1.5 metres deep. A ditched enclosure of this kind is essentially a defined area bounded by a cut trench, the upcast from which would typically have formed an accompanying bank, though the bank here is not described in the record. What was this place for? Domestic settlement, ritual use, agricultural management? The evidence recovered so far declines to say.

The excavation was conducted under licence number 13E0283 by McLoughlin in 2013, prompted by a development proposal on the land. What the dig turned up in the ditch fill, beyond the shells and bone, was an absence: no pottery, no metalwork, no coins, no organic material that could be sent for radiocarbon dating. The eastern side of the enclosure appears to have been damaged, possibly truncated over time by repeated ploughing, which would be consistent with the long agricultural use of this part of north Dublin. Nethercross was a medieval barony, and the landscape around Oldtown has layers of occupation reaching back well before the Norman period, though nothing in the current record connects this particular monument to any specific phase of that history. The seashells in the ditch fill are quietly intriguing. Oldtown lies some distance from the coast, which raises the question of how marine material came to be deposited here, whether as food waste, as part of some construction or liming activity, or simply through later disturbance.

The monument was preserved in situ after the development proposal was redesigned to avoid it, which means the enclosure remains underground and largely unexamined. There is no visitor infrastructure, no marker, and no public access to speak of. The site sits in agricultural land, and the enclosure itself would not be visible at ground level. For anyone researching the archaeology of north County Dublin, the excavation report by McLoughlin and the licence record held by the National Monuments Service are the most direct routes into what is known, and what conspicuously is not.