Up to eleven structures can be made out in the ground, their banks averaging half a metre high and a metre wide, with internal dimensions ranging from two metres to nearly eight. Some are rectangular, three are circular, and in one place a section of coursed drystone walling breaks the surface, a rare moment of legibility in an otherwise muted landscape. Scattered between the structures are further sod-covered mounds whose purpose remains unclear.

The likely explanation for this nucleated cluster of buildings, that is, a small settlement of multiple dwellings grouped together rather than spread across the land, points to the commercial ambitions of Sir William Petty in the late seventeenth century. Petty, a physician, surveyor, and one of the more energetic projectors of his era, established a pilchard fishery at Ballinskelligs, and the hamlet may have housed the workers it required. Pilchard fishing was an organised, seasonal industry along the south-west Irish coast at that time, dependent on lookouts, boats, nets, and curing facilities, and the people involved needed somewhere to live. The proximity to the abbey ruins adds a longer chronological shadow; the abbey itself is medieval, and it is possible that the site has a more layered history than the fishery connection alone suggests, though the evidence as it stands points most directly to that late seventeenth-century moment.