These platforms were typically created by cutting into a slope or building up material to produce a flat, stable surface for a dwelling, and their presence in the landscape is often the only visible trace that a community once occupied a particular spot.

Grange itself sits in a part of Sligo with a remarkably dense archaeological landscape, close to Lissadell and the shoreline of Drumcliff Bay, in a region where evidence of human activity stretches back thousands of years. Settlement platforms as a monument type can date from the early medieval period onward, though without further excavation or documentation it is rarely possible to assign a precise date to any individual example. What survives above ground is usually subtle: a slight levelling of the terrain, a terrace cut into a hillside, perhaps a faint outline that only becomes readable in low winter light or from the air.