Between 2000 and 2001, excavations revealed five stone structures, including vernacular cottages with drystone walls, clay floors, and cobbled areas. The buildings, measuring approximately 15 metres by 5 metres, featured practical domestic elements such as chimney embrasures, fireplaces, and internal divisions. Structure 1, the most intact example, contained two rooms with separate fireplaces and traces of a flag floor, whilst its eastern doorway remained open and a corresponding western entrance had been deliberately blocked up.

The largest structure discovered measured an impressive 18 metres north-south by 12 metres and contained several internal walls, suggesting a more complex building, possibly serving a communal or administrative function. Interestingly, one of its walls appears to have been constructed atop a dump of material containing 17th-century pottery, providing valuable dating evidence for the site. The pottery sherds recovered throughout the excavation, though numbering fewer than 200 pieces, consistently point to the 1600s as the period of construction and occupation.

These ruins represent part of the original Plantation settlement of Killybegs, when English and Scottish settlers were encouraged to colonise Ulster following the Flight of the Earls in 1607. The settlement’s location on Rough Point, along with evidence of lazy-beds (a traditional Irish agricultural feature) and boundary walls, paints a picture of a small but organised community attempting to establish itself on this windswept promontory. The cartographic evidence from the period corroborates the archaeological findings, confirming that this was indeed a thriving settlement during one of the most transformative periods in Irish history.