Archaeological excavation revealed five houses in total, the remains of a post-medieval settlement dating to the 16th or 17th century. One of the more puzzling structures among them measures just 11.5 metres by 2.5 metres, an unusually narrow footprint that raised questions from the start about what exactly it was.

The excavation, reported by Cotter in 2003 and 2005, uncovered the stone foundations of this slender building immediately to the south of one of the other houses in the group. Its dimensions and its closeness to that neighbouring structure led archaeologists to suggest it may have functioned as a lean-to addition rather than a freestanding dwelling, the kind of secondary outbuilding or covered extension that would have been attached to the wall of the main house for storage, shelter, or additional working space. What gives the whole site an extra dimension is what lay beneath it all. The five houses were built on the footprint of a medieval moated site, a type of enclosed farmstead common in Ireland from the 13th century onward, typically consisting of a raised platform surrounded by a water-filled ditch. Whoever settled at Ballinvinny in the post-medieval period was, knowingly or not, building on centuries of earlier habitation, reusing ground that had already been shaped and occupied long before them.