Ringforts, which are enclosed farmsteads typically dating from the early medieval period, roughly 500 to 1200 AD, were once the most common form of rural settlement across Ireland. Finding structural foundations inside one raises the kind of question that archaeologists tend to find irresistible: was this building contemporary with the fort itself, a later intrusion into an older enclosure, or something in between?

The foundations were noted by archaeologist Martin Timoney in 1989, and the building sits within a ringfort recorded separately in the Sligo archaeological record. Beyond that, the details are spare. The presence of a secondary structure inside a ringfort is not unheard of, as these enclosures were sometimes reused or reoccupied long after their original construction, occasionally by communities with no particular knowledge of, or concern for, what the earthwork had originally been. What survives at Seafield is fragmentary enough that the building's age and purpose remain open questions rather than settled facts.