These are not ceremonial monuments or elite enclosures but the remains of a small neighbourhood, seven excavated house sites and their yards arranged on a limestone outcrop between two ancient forts, with evidence of rebuilding, shared walls, and the kind of incremental, pragmatic construction that suggests people simply getting on with living. The area sits roughly 200 metres east of what was once a small lake, drained in the nineteenth century and formerly part of Lough Gur itself. Before the drainage, that lake held two islands known as the Balie Islands, the remains of two crannóga, which are artificial or partly artificial lake islands used as settlement sites in early medieval and prehistoric Ireland.

The excavation of the house sites was carried out by Seán P. Ó Ríordáin, whose published account of 1949 remains the principal source for what was found. The seven enclosures occupy the relatively level ground between the cashel to the south and Carraig Aille fort to the north-north-west, the two forts being separated by roughly 40 metres. Ó Ríordáin's excavation revealed that what had appeared on the surface as simple banks and mounds bounding rectangular areas was in fact considerably more complex underneath. Some enclosures were clearly houses, some appeared to be yards, and one was part house and part yard. The largest, Enclosure I, measured roughly 18 by 8.5 metres internally, its walls built of double-faced local limestone with a rubble and earth core. Enclosure II, described by Ó Ríordáin as the most satisfactory house of the group, retained eight post-holes and a floor of bare rock supplemented by paving and packed clay. The sequencing of construction could be read in the stonework itself: Enclosure I appears to have been the earliest, with later houses butted against its eastern wall rather than bonded to it, indicating they were added afterwards. Enclosure VI was rebuilt twice over, its successive floor levels compressed into a single modest patch of ground.

The site is a designated national monument, subject to a preservation order under the National Monuments Acts 1930 to 2014. Lough Gur as a whole is one of the most densely archaeological landscapes in Ireland, and the settlement cluster sits within that wider context alongside the cashel and Carraig Aille fort, both of which were also excavated by Ó Ríordáin. The wall remains are low, rarely more than 0.6 metres in height, so a visit rewards close attention rather than distant viewing. The outline of the enclosures and the traces of paving are most legible in low, raking light, which makes early morning or late afternoon visits in spring or autumn particularly useful for reading the ground.