The site came to light not through a planned research dig but through the routine groundwork of someone building a house, which is how a good many Irish archaeological discoveries happen. What emerged in 2002 was a cluster of pits filled with burnt soil, metal slag, charcoal, and traces of vitrification, the glassy residue produced when material is exposed to extreme and sustained heat. Three curved furnace bases, averaging roughly 0.3 metres across, were recovered from the topsoil, each consistent with the kind of small smelting or smithing hearth that would have been used to work iron or bronze. The picture they suggest is not of an isolated incident but of a dedicated, repeated activity carried out in one corner of an already significant place.

The location matters. The metalworking area sits within the north-eastern quadrant of an ecclesiastical enclosure, the kind of roughly circular or oval boundary, typically defined by an earthen bank or ditch, that once demarcated an early medieval monastic or church site. Finding industrial activity within such an enclosure is not unusual; early Irish ecclesiastical communities were often self-sufficient, and metalworking, sometimes of considerable skill, was practised alongside prayer and agriculture. The main pit uncovered during testing measured approximately 1.8 metres by 1 metre, and lay just 7 metres south of the enclosure bank. Around it, three smaller burnt areas of about 0.5 metres in diameter were also identified. The excavator, Ní Loingsigh, recorded the work in 2002, and a further pit came to light during monitoring of the relocated construction groundworks. None of the pits were fully excavated, as none posed an immediate threat to the archaeology. The house itself was shifted 5 metres to the south-west specifically to avoid disturbing them. Roughly 65 metres to the west lies a possible burnt mound, a separate but related type of prehistoric or early medieval site associated with the heating of water using fire-cracked stones, which hints that this landscape has been used, and used intensively, across a long stretch of time.