The house measures just six metres along its longer axis and two metres across, making it a cramped structure by any period's standards. What makes it quietly peculiar is its position: someone, at some unrecorded point in time, chose to build or shelter within the bounds of an already ancient enclosure.

Ringforts, roughly circular enclosures defined by earthen banks or stone walls, were built across Ireland primarily during the early medieval period, though many remained landmarks in the landscape for centuries afterwards. They carried considerable presence in local memory, often associated in folklore with the otherworld, which made them places people were generally reluctant to disturb. The decision to place a habitation structure inside one at Killaroo is therefore a small but genuine puzzle. The date of the house is unresolved, and without excavation it is impossible to say whether it represents a medieval reuse of the enclosure, a post-medieval shelter for a farmer or labourer, or something else entirely. The ringfort itself is recorded separately, and the two features now exist in an uneasy, undated relationship with one another.