What remains is not a single building or an obvious ruin but a coherent domestic cluster, the kind of place where several families once organised their daily lives around yards, outbuildings, and shared boundaries, and which was then abandoned and left to be absorbed slowly by the landscape.

The site occupies roughly 0.35 hectares, bounded to the west by the Shankill River, to the south by a modern road, and to the east by a sunken lane, the sort of hollow way worn down over centuries of foot and cart traffic. Within that frame, at least five rectangular houses have been identified, each with smaller structures attached, probably byres, stores, or workshops of the kind that would have clustered around any medieval rural dwelling. Several of these buildings sit within small rectangular yards or enclosures, a detail that gives the complex a legible, almost planned quality. Deserted medieval settlements of this type, sometimes called DMVs, are the remains of rural communities that ceased to be occupied during the medieval or early post-medieval period, often as a result of plague, agricultural change, landlord consolidation, or simple economic decline. The specific circumstances at Cloghleagh are not recorded, but the physical evidence suggests a functioning settlement of some scale rather than an isolated farmstead.