The two structures were not simply neighbours; they sat within a moated site, the kind of enclosure created in medieval Ireland by digging a water-filled ditch around a raised platform to serve as both a domestic settlement and a marker of status. The western house, oriented on a north-south axis, stood at a slight divergence from its eastern companion, which ran east-west. That they faced different directions suggests deliberate planning rather than incremental growth, though what practical or social logic governed the layout is now lost.

Excavation revealed that the western house was built from timber, its walls set into foundation trenches cut into the ground rather than raised on stone courses. The one lasting piece of stonework was the chimney, its foundations surviving in the north-east corner of the structure. Both houses measured roughly ten metres by five metres, a scale consistent with modest but permanent domestic occupation. The dating evidence came from sherds of Saintonge pottery found associated with both buildings. Saintonge ware, produced in the Charente region of western France, was widely traded into southern Ireland during the medieval period and is a reliable marker for 13th-century occupation. Its presence at Ballinvinny places these two households firmly within the world of Anglo-Norman settlement that was reshaping Cork and its hinterland during that century. The excavation was carried out and reported by Cotter, with publications appearing in 2003 and 2005.