The site exploited a U-shaped river promontory, using the natural curve of the water as a ready-made defence on three sides, while the vulnerable landward approach was blocked by a fosse and earthen bank. A fosse is simply a defensive ditch, and here it ran five to six metres wide and up to one and a half metres deep, backed by a bank reaching two metres in height. The whole enclosure measured roughly 65 by 50 metres and was further subdivided internally by a second bank, creating an outer and an inner zone, each with its own gateway.

The house itself sat within the outer enclosure and was a substantial stone structure measuring around 13.5 by 10 metres externally. Only the ground floor survived to any appreciable height, rising to about 1.8 metres above foundation level, but what remained told a clear story. A cross-wall divided the ground floor into two rooms. A projection from the north wall contained the partial remains of a spiral staircase, evidence that the building once rose higher. Beside it, against the western wall, was the base of a small latrine tower, a detail that speaks to the expectations of whoever lived there: this was not a rough garrison post but a residence with some pretension to comfort and privacy. Access to the house's entrance was conspicuously awkward, reachable only along a narrow path squeezed between the building and the inner bank, an arrangement that served as an additional layer of security. Behind the second bank, in the inner enclosure, there were signs of two smaller timber buildings set on sill beams. Coins of Henry III and glazed pottery dated the entire complex to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, placing it squarely in the period of Anglo-Norman consolidation across Munster, when settlers were fortifying promontories and river bends across the Irish countryside with exactly this kind of layered, pragmatic defensiveness.