Nothing breaks the surface to suggest what lies beneath, and the site would have remained effectively invisible had an aerial photograph taken in May 1977 not caught the faint shadows of cropmarks, the telltale discolouration that drought or differential growth can press into grass above buried features, tracing the outlines of structures that vanished from view long ago.

Excavations carried out between 1987 and 1991 at Curraghatoor revealed the house in considerable detail. The structure, recorded as Structure 6 in Martin Doody's subsequent publication, was sub-rectangular in plan, measuring 3.4 metres north to south and 4.4 metres east to west. Its outline was defined by foundation trenches and post-holes, the kind of evidence that indicates timber construction, where upright posts carried the walls and roof rather than anything built in stone. A gap of 0.43 metres in the foundation trench on the eastern side, with an inturned terminal, points to an east-facing entrance, a detail small enough to seem incidental but significant in understanding how the building was arranged and oriented. Inside, stake-holes and pits suggest the ordinary business of domestic use, storage, or repair. What makes the picture more layered still is the relationship of this house to its neighbours: it was built directly over an earlier structure beneath it, and sits immediately adjacent to another house to the north-west, hinting at a settlement that was used, modified, and rebuilt across time rather than established all at once.