They appear on a map drawn around 1790 by Edward Ledwich, the antiquarian and Church of Ireland clergyman, marked clearly enough to suggest they were a recognised feature of the landscape at the time. Today, the ground where they once lay is covered by a conifer plantation, and no physical trace of them survives above the surface.

Fish ponds of this kind were a common enough feature of monastic and later landed estates, serving as managed freshwater enclosures where fish, typically carp or pike, were kept alive and harvested as needed. Monaincha itself had a long ecclesiastical history as an island site, originally surrounded by bogland rather than open water, and the ponds recorded by Ledwich may reflect either eighteenth-century estate management or something considerably older. The uncertainty about their date is precisely why they were logged as a site of archaeological interest: features that cannot be confidently assigned to the recent past are worth keeping on record, even when nothing visible remains.

The conifer planting that now covers the area means there is little for a visitor to observe on the ground. What the site offers instead is a small lesson in how landscapes are read: a mark on an old map, a patch of trees, and the reasonable suspicion that something lies underneath.