Position within the walls was a matter of rank, and rank, in turn, was a matter of survival. One particular house, roughly seven metres across and curving in plan, sat in the northern half of the fort's inner enclosure, and the people who occupied it were, by one archaeologist's reckoning, second only to the chief himself.

Cahercommaun is a cashel, a type of early medieval stone ringfort, built on a dramatic cliff edge in County Clare. Excavations carried out by Hugh Hencken in 1934, published in 1938, identified several structures within the complex. The house in question formed part of what Hencken described as a cellular arrangement, conjoined with a neighbouring hut to the east. It contained a hearth, designated Structure 5 in Hencken's numbering, and a further large hearth between the house and the enclosure wall may have belonged to an additional structure, Structure 5A, though that association remains uncertain. Hencken's conclusion about the occupants was precise: they were people secondary to the chief, but only slightly so. A later study by Claire Cotter, published in 1999, added a strategic dimension to the social one. The northern half of the inner enclosure, she noted, would have been the most defensible position within the fort from the perspective of attack, which may well explain why the most important residents chose to live there. Safety and status, it seems, pointed to the same corner of the fort.