Excavations carried out in 1997 revealed evidence of domestic occupation dating to the 12th and 13th centuries at a location that had previously served as a burial ground, and which sat within an ecclesiastical enclosure, the kind of roughly circular or oval boundary, often defined by a raised bank or ditch, that typically marked out an early Christian religious site and its surrounding land.

The layering of uses here is what makes the site archaeologically interesting. An ecclesiastical enclosure implies an organised religious presence, likely a church or monastic settlement of some kind, with the burial ground functioning as its consecrated space. By the time the medieval occupation took place, sometime in the 1100s or 1200s, that earlier religious character had evidently given way to more ordinary habitation. Whether the church had fallen out of use, been abandoned, or simply been absorbed into a changing landscape is not recorded in the excavation summary compiled by Geraldine Stout and drawing on Carroll's 1998 report. What the archaeology does confirm is a sequence: first an ecclesiastical enclosure, then burial within it, then residential activity overlying or adjacent to both.

Butterfield sits within the suburban sprawl of south Dublin, in an area now largely absorbed by residential development. The site itself is not a visitor destination in any formal sense, and there is no monument or interpretive panel marking the spot. Its significance lies in the record rather than the remains, most of which were uncovered during development-related investigation. For anyone interested in the archaeology of early medieval Dublin, the Carroll 1998 report remains the primary reference point, and the site entry in the Archaeological Survey of Ireland database, under record numbers DU022-038001 and DU022-038002, gives the clearest coordinates for locating it within the broader landscape of ecclesiastical settlement in the county.