The word they carry is "moat", a term that on Irish maps of that era typically signals something older and more ambiguous than the word alone implies, often pointing to earthworks of medieval or earlier origin rather than any water-filled defensive ditch in the conventional sense.

One of the two features was recorded on the 1936 six-inch OS map as lying roughly 100 metres south-west of Moatville House, a country house whose very name suggests the local memory of these earthworks was strong enough to shape a domestic address. The second appeared on the 1935 six-inch map at the northern corner of a field containing fish-ponds. When surveyors went looking for what remained, the results were discouraging. The first feature had vanished entirely, leaving no visible trace. The second had not disappeared so much as been absorbed: it survives only as part of an open-drain system threading through what is described as a generally marshy area. The landscape, in other words, swallowed one and repurposed the other. Fish-ponds of medieval or post-medieval date, which were typically managed enclosures used to maintain a supply of fresh fish for a household or estate, add a further layer of organised, purposeful land use to what is already a complicated local picture. What the "moat" features originally were, whether enclosures, earthwork boundaries, or something else altogether, is no longer determinable on the ground.