Long recorded as a fish pond, this broad, banked feature south of the Ward river valley is actually a canal, constructed between 1714 and 1719 as a centrepiece of a carefully designed landscape at Brackenstown. The fish came later, or perhaps alongside, but the structure itself was something more deliberate and more ideologically loaded than a simple stocked pond.

The canal was laid out by Robert Molesworth as part of what he called the landscape of Breckdenston. Contemporary description recorded it as thirty yards broad and flanked on each side by two walks, a higher and a lower, with the higher walk planted with trees. According to the research of O'Kane (2004), the design reflected Whig political philosophy, Italianate garden principles, and what was described as a farmlike way of gardening, a consciously progressive aesthetic that married formal Continental influence with productive, working land. Molesworth was a prominent Whig grandee and diplomat, and his gardens were not simply decorative; they were an expression of political and philosophical outlook made visible in earthworks and plantings. The canal, with its double-flanking walks, would have read as a statement as much as a landscape feature.

Today the site survives in fragmented but still legible form. The western third lies within the grounds of Brackenstown House, where it has been cleared of vegetation and is used as a horse riding paddock, though the underlying form of the banks remains intact. The rest of the feature extends northward, bordered by playing fields and housing estates, with the southern section serving as a public walkway edged by well-established trees and an outer ditch. The banks themselves are roughly thirteen metres wide at the top and undulate in a way that rewards slow walking rather than a hurried glance. Towards the eastern end, the base of the site becomes noticeably waterlogged, a reminder of the canal's original function. It is not a dramatically signposted place, but the scale of the earthworks, once you are standing between those tree-lined banks, is quietly clarifying.