No earthwork, no obvious rise in the ground, no local landmark. What the excavation revealed was a moated site, the kind of enclosed farmstead or small manor surrounded by a water-filled ditch that became common across Ireland during the medieval period of Anglo-Norman settlement. These sites are often associated with lesser landholders, small-scale agricultural life rather than military ambition, and Ballyveelish fits that pattern quietly and without fuss.

The partial excavation, carried out between 1981 and 1982 and later published by Doody in 1987, uncovered several features within the moated enclosure. One of them, designated Structure D, was an irregular spread of roughly squared stones measuring approximately six metres north to south and two and a half metres east to west. It was interpreted as the collapsed remains of a stone building. Among the stones, excavators found a rotary quern, a hand-powered grinding stone used for processing grain, which gives some sense of the domestic, working character of whoever lived here. The overall finds were sparse: a small assemblage of objects and animal bones that, taken together, suggest the site may have been occupied for only a relatively brief period. The material recovered pointed to a thirteenth or fourteenth century date, placing the activity here within the busy and often turbulent decades of medieval expansion and consolidation across Munster.