Cutaway bog, where peat has been removed by cutting, can expose structures that would otherwise remain buried and invisible for centuries, and in this case what emerged beneath that thin peat layer was a remarkably intact complex of rooms, passages, and annexes, preserved in the cold, airless conditions that bogs are so good at maintaining.

The excavation, carried out by Hayden, revealed a trapezoidal hut, wider at the north end and narrowing toward the south, measuring roughly 3.4 metres north to south and between 1.6 and 2.8 metres east to west. Its drystone walls, built without mortar by fitting stones carefully together, still stood to around a metre in height and were lined internally with flat slabs in places. At the narrower southern end, a stone-lined entrance passage some 2.6 metres long led into the structure, its floor and the area immediately outside paved with closely set flat slabs. A collapsed slab in the entrance suggested the passage was once roofed over. Two annexes, one rectangular and one roughly circular, abutted the main hut at the northwest and south respectively, each with its own entrance marked by substantial pillar-like stones. The rectangular northwest annexe retained what was probably an original lintel stone lying in its entrance. Inside the main hut, a small stone-lined hearth produced ash deposits containing small mammal and fish bones, and a radiocarbon date from this material placed occupation somewhere between 562 and 758 AD, squarely within the early Christian period in Ireland. Among the finds were blue glass beads, stone spindle whorls used in hand-spinning thread, and rubbing stones, suggesting a domestic household engaged in ordinary daily work rather than any obviously ceremonial function.