The remains measure roughly eleven metres east to west and seven metres north to south, modest dimensions that suggest a domestic structure of some kind, though when exactly it was built or occupied is not known.

The house site occupies the north-western quadrant of a ringfort, the type of circular earthen enclosure, typically dating from the early medieval period, that dots the Irish countryside in considerable numbers. Using the interior of a ringfort for later settlement was not uncommon; the raised, defended ground offered practical advantages long after the original construction had fallen out of use. At Rathtrim, the combination of an elevated position on the hill shoulder and the ready-made enclosure of the ringfort would have made this a sensible, if unassuming, place to build. The indeterminate date assigned to the house site reflects a genuine uncertainty; without excavation, it is impossible to say whether the structure belongs to the medieval period, the post-medieval era, or somewhere else entirely along that long continuum of rural habitation.