Ringforts, the circular or oval enclosed farmsteads that dot the Irish countryside in their thousands, are familiar enough features of the early medieval landscape. What makes this particular site in Clonickilvant quietly interesting is that tucked into the eastern quadrant of the ringfort's interior is what appears to be the remains of a second, separate building, a subrectangular house site defined by its own slight earthen bank, sitting inside the larger enclosure's bank.

The inner house site is modest in its visible remains, but the detail that catches the eye is a gap on the south-south-west side of its defining bank, which is thought to mark the original entrance. That a domestic structure should shelter within an already enclosed space suggests a layering of use or occupation, perhaps reflecting different periods of habitation, or a deliberate arrangement of domestic and enclosing space within a single farmstead complex. The site sits atop a low rise with good views in all directions, a quality that would have been as practically useful to early medieval inhabitants as it is atmospherically suggestive today.