Nobody knows exactly when it was built or when it fell out of use. What survives is a subrectangular footprint, roughly 6.9 metres north to south and 4.4 metres east to west on the interior, defined not by standing walls but by the subtler language of banks and scarps: a low, grassed-over stony bank to the west, rising no more than half a metre, and a long, low earthen scarp to the east, nearly a metre high in places. The field wall that cuts across the remains, running roughly south-south-east to north-north-west, bisects the structure and marks the point where one type of survival gives way to the other.

The house sits within, or rather under, a much larger feature: a denuded cashel called Caherloughlin. A cashel is a type of early medieval stone enclosure, essentially a ringfort built from dry stone rather than earthen banks, and Caherloughlin appears to have been a substantial one, even in its heavily degraded state. The relationship between the house and the cashel is not precisely dated, and it is unclear whether the structure belongs to the cashel's original occupation or represents a later reuse of the enclosure. What is clear is that later agricultural improvement has done considerable work here, with the field wall itself becoming part of the archaeological record, both obscuring the earlier remains and preserving them in a particular shape. The site lies about 500 metres south of the foreshore, which places it in the quiet coastal hinterland of the Burren's western edge.