What is less often remarked upon is that the space between those ramparts was not simply defensive buffer zone. Tucked into the south-western quadrant, wedged between the inner and middle ramparts and sitting immediately north of a cashel, a small cluster of early medieval dwellings was built by people who evidently found the old hillfort's enclosures a practical place to settle, centuries after the fort's original purpose had passed.

Excavations carried out in 1994 as part of the Discovery Programme's North Munster Project uncovered three of these hut sites. The most closely studied, referred to as House 1, was an oval structure measuring roughly 6.2 metres north to south and 2.6 metres east to west, its walls formed from a double kerb of stone with rubble packed between the two faces, a construction method that kept a low profile and made good use of available material. On the downslope side, a rubble ramp buttressed the wall against the gradient, while a narrow lined entrance, less than a metre wide, opened to the east. Inside, a large sunken feature, possibly two separate pits, took up much of the floor. The northern pit was faced with stone slabs and showed clear evidence of burning in place, suggesting it was used for cooking or some form of controlled heating. A radiocarbon date obtained from the structure placed its use between AD 723 and 797, firmly in the early Christian period. Houses 2 and 3 were located 15 metres to the east and 17 metres to the west-south-west respectively, suggesting a small but deliberate grouping of domestic buildings making use of the shelter and enclosure the old ramparts still provided.