It was aerial reconnaissance that revealed the full extent of the complex, the kind of discovery that serves as a reminder of how much archaeology is invisible at ground level, legible only from above as shadows, soil marks, and subtle changes in vegetation.

What the aerial survey identified was a coherent settlement system rather than an isolated feature. In the northern half of the complex sit the remains of three houses of broadly similar dimensions, each around twelve metres long and six metres wide, with two of them retaining traces of internal divisions. Between the houses, small patches of lazy beds survive, the corrugated ridge-and-furrow earthworks associated with potato cultivation, typically from the post-medieval period into the nineteenth century. To the south, grassed-over banks of earth and stone extend the picture, and a rectangular hollow measuring seven metres by six metres may represent a fourth house. Near the eastern edge of the complex sits a circular enclosure whose purpose remains unclear. About a hundred metres to the west lies a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead common in early medieval Ireland, along with a related feature recorded alongside it. Whether the earthworks at Glennafosha represent a single phase of occupation or accumulated use across different centuries has not been firmly established, and that ambiguity is part of what makes the site quietly compelling.