The building is modest in its proportions, roughly ten and a half metres long and just over five metres wide, oriented east to west with a narrow entrance on the eastern side. That entrance, a little over a metre across, is about as wide as a doorway needs to be, and its survival as a measurable feature gives the structure an unexpected legibility. You can still read the shape of domestic life in it.

The house is one of at least three such structures within the Railstown medieval settlement, a cluster of buildings arranged across undulating ground near a pond. Another house lies roughly fifteen metres to the north, and a third sits about twenty-seven and a half metres to the south, suggesting a genuine settlement pattern rather than an isolated farmstead. The walls that defined this particular building survive as an earthen bank, the kind of construction common in medieval rural Ireland, where a mix of compacted earth and stone served as the structural core of a dwelling. Internally the bank stands at around half a metre high; externally slightly less. It is not dramatic in height, but the consistency of its dimensions points to something that was deliberately built and maintained. Medieval earthen-walled houses of this type were typically roofed in organic materials, thatch or turf, leaving little above ground once a settlement was abandoned, which makes the survival of even a readable outline significant.