The precise extent of the medieval settlement here has never been established, which gives the site an unsettled quality; it existed, it suffered, it may have partially recovered, and then it faded, leaving scholars uncertain where exactly it began and ended.

The Annals of the Four Masters record that Ardmayle was destroyed in 1581, but the settlement apparently did not disappear entirely. A 1641 account cited by the historian White describes a Captain Peisley marching to Ardmayle and killing seven or eight men and women he found standing outside their own doors. The casual brutality of that episode is striking partly because of what it implies: people were still living ordinary street-facing lives there, even after the destruction of sixty years earlier. What survives today is a dense cluster of remains from different periods. There is a motte and bailey, the earthwork form of an early Norman fortification consisting of a raised mound and an adjoining enclosed yard, lying to the north of a medieval church and graveyard. That graveyard contains two floriated graveslabs, medieval carved stones decorated with foliage patterns. Nearby stands a medieval tower house, with earthworks visible in the surrounding fields. An enclosure known as Forte Edward was given a new life in the nineteenth century when a summerhouse was built into it, incorporating architectural fragments salvaged from Ardmayle Castle, a seventeenth-century fortified house at the western end of the village. That fortified house also retains its bawn, a defensive walled enclosure typically attached to such houses in this period. The summerhouse may additionally incorporate medieval stonework from the church, though this has not been confirmed.

The site rewards slow walking rather than a single focal point. The earthworks in the fields to the east and south of the tower house are easy to overlook, and the layering of periods, Norman, medieval, early modern, Victorian, becomes more legible once you know to look for the joins.