When archaeologists excavated the site, they found a rectangular hearth measuring 3.5 metres north to south and 1.6 metres east to west, but no walls could be conclusively identified. The building is known, in effect, by its fire alone.

This hearth was one of five such houses uncovered through excavation, the remains collectively pointing to a small post-medieval settlement that had been established on the footprint of an earlier medieval moated site. A moated site is a broad category of enclosure, typically a roughly square or rectangular platform of raised ground surrounded by a water-filled or wet ditch, associated in Ireland with the Anglo-Norman period and often interpreted as a high-status rural homestead or manorial centre. The decision to build a cluster of post-medieval dwellings directly on top of such an earlier enclosure was not unusual; usable, already-modified ground had practical appeal. This particular house sat within the moated enclosure itself, near its south-western corner. Work by Cotter, published in 2003 and 2005, provides what documentation survives of the excavation and its findings.