What makes the arrangement quietly unusual is the apparent improvisation of it: one of the structures, measuring roughly 5.6 by 10.2 metres, seems to have borrowed the moat's own western bank as a ready-made wall, folding the site's defensive earthwork into the fabric of a building. A moated site, for those unfamiliar with the term, is a farmstead or small settlement enclosed by a water-filled or wet ditch, a form of protected rural settlement that became common in Ireland during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, typically associated with Anglo-Norman settlers.

There are at least two other building footings within the same enclosure, and if these structures are contemporary with the moated site itself, they are medieval in date. Whether they served as houses, storage, or some combination of uses is not certain; the notes describe them cautiously as "possibly houses". The third structure is the least clearly defined of the three, its outline harder to read in the terrain, which sits on a low natural rise surrounded by wet ground. That waterlogged setting would have helped define and maintain the moat, but it also means the remains have been left largely undisturbed, embedded in pasture rather than absorbed into later development.