The place is known locally as Móta Uí Fhearghail, the Moat of Farrell, and the name points toward something older and more politically charged than its Norman-era appearance might suggest. A motte and bailey is a type of fortification introduced to Ireland by the Anglo-Normans, consisting of a raised earthen mound, the motte, with a timber or stone structure on top, adjoined by an enclosed courtyard, the bailey. But the mound at Moatfarrell may not have begun as a Norman project at all.

Following the division of the O'Farrell sept and their lands around 1516, the O'Farralls (Buí) emerged as rulers of South Annaly, a territory broadly corresponding to the southern and western parts of what is now County Longford. The mound here is thought to have served as their inauguration place, a site of ceremonial political significance where a new lord would be formally recognised by his people. Such inauguration mounds were a deeply Gaelic institution, and the suspicion is that the Anglo-Normans, when they arrived and raised their own earthwork, simply absorbed a site that already carried authority and meaning. It is a pattern seen elsewhere in Ireland, where conquerors found it useful, or perhaps unavoidable, to build on ground that already held weight in local memory. At some point in the sixteenth century, a stone castle was constructed on the summit of the motte, adding yet another layer to a site that had already been claimed and reclaimed more than once.