A ringfort, for those unfamiliar, is a type of enclosed settlement common in early medieval Ireland, typically formed by one or more earthen or stone banks encircling a domestic space. What makes the Fanningstown example particularly interesting is not the enclosure itself but what survives within it: two adjoined houses whose walls still stand, in places, to a height of between one and three feet, preserving enough detail to read how the buildings related to one another and, in one case, how people moved through them.

The site was recorded in 1943 by O'Kelly, whose measured survey remains the principal source of what is known about it. The larger of the two structures runs east to west, measuring roughly 23 metres by 7.6 metres, with walls about 76 centimetres thick, built in a double-faced construction with a rubble and earth core between the two stone skins. On the southern long wall, a break survives with one carefully built jamb still intact, suggesting this was the original entrance, positioned about 3.8 metres from the western end. The second house, smaller at approximately 12 metres by 6 metres, runs north to south and was built directly against the eastern wall of the first, so that where they meet the combined wall is of double thickness, two separate walls pressed together. During O'Kelly's visit, bone fragments including jaws of pig and ox were found near the north-eastern part of the rampart, in soil burnt red and containing charcoal. A sandpit in the adjacent field to the north had also yielded bones, though without any associated finds to help date or contextualise them.

The site carries the national monument reference LI022-043003- and falls within the Smallcounty barony. Because no precise date has been established for the house structures, they sit in an interpretive grey area, associated with the ringfort but not firmly pinned to any particular period. Visitors approaching the area should expect the remains to be low and unenclosed, the kind of archaeology that rewards patience and a slow walk around the perimeter rather than a quick glance. The western end of the larger house, where the walls are at their highest, gives the clearest sense of the original construction method.