What survives today are reconstructed wall footings, low and unassuming, tracing the outlines of two square structures aligned roughly north-east to south-west. Embedded in the east wall of the graveyard, at its southern end, is a late medieval two-centred pointed doorway, the kind of arched opening associated with Gothic construction, which appears to have originally served as the entrance to the buildings themselves. The doorway is older than the structures it came to serve, a piece of earlier stonework absorbed into a later arrangement.

The buildings occupy an unusual position in the site's documentary record. They do not appear on a map produced by James Ware in 1658, but they do show up on a plan drawn by Blaymire in 1739. That gap of roughly eighty years places their construction somewhere between those two dates, a window that corresponds with the architectural character of what remains. Clonmacnoise had long since passed its early medieval peak by this period; founded in the sixth century by Saint Ciarán, it had been a major centre of learning and ecclesiastical activity for centuries before falling into gradual decline. These buildings belong to a much later phase, one that tends to receive less attention than the round towers and high crosses that draw most visitors, yet speaks to the site's continued use well into the early modern period.