The structure measures roughly 11.5 metres north to south and 5.9 metres east to west, and it retains fireplaces in both its north and south gable walls, a detail that suggests it was designed with habitation in mind rather than defence.

The enclosure itself is a bawn, a term for the fortified courtyard wall that typically surrounded an Irish tower house, originally intended to protect livestock and provide a defended perimeter. In the south-west corner of this particular bawn sits a ruined tower house, the older and more martial of the two structures on the site. The building in the south-east corner is described as a later addition, which points to a pattern common across late medieval and early modern Ireland, where households within bawn enclosures gradually supplemented or replaced the cramped verticality of tower houses with longer, lower ranges better suited to everyday life. The Archaeological Survey of Ballinrobe and District, citing Lavelle's 1994 survey of the area, is the source for what we know of the dimensions and layout here.