What appears today as an ordinary access road leading to Kilgobbin Cottage was, in the early eighteenth century, still a raised bank, and that bank is thought to have traced the line of the Pale Ditch, one of the most consequential earthworks in Irish history.

The Pale, broadly speaking, was the zone of English colonial control in medieval and early modern Ireland, and its boundary was marked in places by a ditch and accompanying earthwork, intended to separate administered territory from the Gaelic lands beyond. Historian Goodbody, writing in 1993, suggested that this boundary feature ran through Kilgobbin, and that the lane in question replaced an earlier bank which itself followed that original ditch line. The implication is significant: the suburban fringes of modern Dublin, now thoroughly absorbed into the commuter landscape, were once a frontier zone, and the physical trace of that frontier lingered here well into the 1700s before being gradually absorbed into the road network.

There is no dramatic monument to seek out here, and that is rather the point. The lane is unremarkable to look at, which makes the knowledge of what it may represent all the more disorienting. Kilgobbin Road runs through the Sandyford and Stepaside area, and the lane itself leads toward Kilgobbin Cottage. Visitors with an interest in landscape history might walk the route with Goodbody's observation in mind, looking at the slight rises and alignments in the ground that hint at something older beneath the tarmac and hedgerows. No signage marks the possible significance of the route, so the satisfaction here is largely one of informed looking.