The kilns, shaped like a figure-of-eight or dumbbell when viewed from above, each had two distinct chambers: a lower firing chamber where heat was generated, and a shallower drying chamber above where grain could be spread and dried before storage or milling. Earth-cut and unlined, they were dug directly into the ground rather than built up with stone or brick, a method common in early medieval Ireland. The site sits at around 140 metres above sea level, looking out over a wide stretch of marshy ground to the north-east and east, with a fast-flowing stream dropping away sharply to the north.

The kilns represent only the earliest layer of activity here. Excavations carried out by Tori McMorran of Eachtra Archaeological Projects in 2007, ahead of roadworks along the N7 national road scheme, revealed a multi-period site of considerable complexity. After the initial phase of cereal processing, large deep ditches were dug to enclose parts of the site. The relationship between this enclosure and the kilns is ambiguous: the ditch-builders cut through many of the kilns without any apparent effort to preserve them, yet the distribution of the kilns clusters almost entirely within what became the enclosed area, suggesting some spatial logic was at work, even if its precise meaning is now unclear. A later phase saw the construction of a massive ditch forming a subrectangular enclosure, consistent with a moated site, a type of enclosed settlement common in Ireland from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, typically associated with Anglo-Norman landholders who dug wide water-filled ditches around a raised central platform. The same ground had, by then, passed through several quite different uses over a long stretch of time.