The date of the house is not known, which is itself quietly telling. Whoever built or inhabited it left no record clear enough to anchor them to a century, only a roughly circular scatter of sod-covered stones, now heavily overgrown.

A ringfort, to borrow a brief explanation, is a circular enclosure defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, built primarily during the early medieval period in Ireland as a defended farmstead. They number in the tens of thousands across the country, and many were reused, built upon, or simply farmed around in later centuries. The Cloghanaskaw ringfort, recorded separately in the county's archaeological inventory, provided the setting for this later structure, whose foundations follow a roughly circular plan within the interior of the enclosure. Whether that shape was dictated by the ringfort's existing topography, or simply reflects a local building tradition, is not recorded. The site sits on elevated ground with open views across the surrounding landscape, which may partly explain why the spot remained attractive to successive occupants across such a long span of time.