When excavated in 1997 by Hayden, the northern portion of the structure was the only section still present; a later field boundary had cut away the southern half entirely, and the western wall appears to have been deliberately dismantled when a neighbouring house was built nearby. What remained was a mixed construction, combining a low earthen and stone mound along the western arc, two vertically set stones enclosing a clay core to the north-west, and a curving arc of larger stones running around to the north and east. Even at the time of excavation, it was unclear which of those larger stones had stood in their original positions and which had simply tumbled there over the centuries.

What makes the site particularly interesting is not the house itself but the sequence it belongs to. Excavation here and at a second nearby structure revealed that both formed part of Phase V in a succession of at least six distinct phases of construction activity concentrated in this one area of Bray Head. In other words, people were building, rebuilding, and building again on these slopes across a span of time long enough to leave layered archaeological traces one on top of another. The circular form of the house is typical of early medieval domestic architecture in Ireland, a period roughly spanning the fifth to twelfth centuries, when roundhouses of stone and earth were the common dwelling type across much of the island. That so many phases of such construction should be identifiable in a single concentrated area points to sustained and repeated habitation rather than any casual or short-term use of the hillside.