What makes them quietly interesting is not just their age but their orientation: the western house was aligned north to south, while the eastern one ran east to west. That deliberate difference in layout, within what was clearly a shared domestic complex, raises questions about function, sequence, and the lives of whoever organised this small settlement.

Both structures measured approximately ten metres by five metres. The eastern house showed evidence of stone foundations, at least in part, and contained a central hearth, the most telling domestic detail to survive. What clinched the dating was ceramic evidence: sherds of Saintonge pottery, a distinctive glazed ware imported from the Saintonge region of western France, were found in association with both houses and place them firmly in the 13th century. Saintonge ware turns up fairly regularly on Anglo-Norman settlement sites in Ireland during this period, carried across as part of the trade that followed colonisation, and its presence here fits a wider pattern of Hiberno-Norman rural life. The broader site is a moated enclosure, a form of defended farmstead common in medieval Ireland and England, where a rectangular area was surrounded by a water-filled or marshy ditch, offering both security and a clear statement of status. Finding two houses inside such an enclosure, oriented differently from one another, adds a layer of domestic complexity that the bare earthwork alone would not suggest.