What gives this site its quiet interest is not any single dramatic feature but rather the cumulative suggestion of organised human settlement, visible only once you know what to look for underfoot and in the older aerial record.

Aerial photographs taken in 1968 revealed earthworks around the church at Ballintogher that point towards a medieval or post-medieval settlement. Immediately to the north-west of the church sits an enclosure, roughly circular in plan and measuring approximately 8.5 metres north to south and 6.6 metres east to west. Its boundary survives as grassed-over wall-footings, around 1.2 metres wide at the crest and 2 metres at the base, rising just over half a metre above the surrounding ground. These footings appear to abut the north-west angle of the church's west gable, though the quoins, the dressed corner-stones that would have defined that junction most clearly, have been removed at some point. Scattered across the surrounding area are the wall-footings of three possible house sites, positioned roughly 45 metres to the north-west, 13 metres to the west-north-west, and 30 metres to the south-east of the church, along with a further enclosure some 44 metres to the north. Taken together, these features describe not just a church in isolation but something closer to a small settled cluster, its domestic and ecclesiastical elements arranged around one another on this exposed ridge of rock outcrop.