None of it was visible from the surface before the diggers moved in, and all of it would have been lost entirely had a rescue excavation not taken place in 2003 ahead of the road construction linking the R671 to Greystones.

The site at Charlesland was excavated under licence in 2003, and the finds it yielded span a surprisingly broad cultural range. Beaker pottery takes its name from the distinctive bell-shaped vessels associated with a pan-European cultural horizon of the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, roughly 2800 to 1800 BC, and its presence here hints at early activity on the site. Alongside it, however, came a socketed looped axehead of the Late Bronze Age, a type of cast bronze tool with a hollow socket for hafting and a loop on the side for securing it to a handle, dating to roughly 1200 to 600 BC. Together, these objects suggest the ground at Charlesland was returned to over a long stretch of time. The linear ditch running 47 metres east to west, the post-hole structure, and the animal burials point to a working, inhabited landscape rather than a purely ceremonial one, though the cremation pit complicates any tidy distinction between the domestic and the ritual.