That early survey shows a T-shaped house positioned towards the eastern edge of the enclosure, annotated simply as "Site of a Building", suggesting the structure was already gone or ruinous by the time the cartographers passed through. Moated sites are a feature of medieval and early modern Ireland, typically consisting of a raised platform or enclosure surrounded by a water-filled ditch, associated with manorial settlement and the organisation of agricultural land. What makes the Ballyraine Middle site particularly melancholy is the gap between that documentary evidence and the present: the entire moated enclosure was destroyed in 1971.

The suggestion that this may have been a medieval manor house comes from correspondence attributed to Barry, cited in communications between the Office of Public Works and the National Museum of Ireland. The T-shaped plan of the house, as recorded on the 1838 map, is consistent with domestic structures of the 16th or 17th century, and the combination of house and moat points to a site of some local significance, likely the administrative or residential centre of a landholding. The destruction of the earthworks in 1971 means that whatever physical evidence once remained above ground has since been lost, leaving the cartographic record and archival correspondence as the primary witnesses to what stood here. The site carries a preservation order under the National Monuments Acts, a designation that arrived too late to prevent the damage already done.