What the excavation revealed instead was something far more layered: not one house but several circular prehistoric dwellings, their remains overlapping across a sheltered hillside shelf, with the lake shore sitting roughly 114 yards to the south.

The site, designated Site C and registered as National Monument No. 247, was excavated by Seán P. Ó Ríordáin during the 1940s. It occupied a considerable stretch of hillside on Knockadoon's southern face, naturally sheltered from the east by a rocky ridge and bounded to the west by exposed rock surfaces. The position was clearly chosen with care. As O'Kelly described in 1944, within an enclosing stone wall sat a cluster of circular posthole houses, each around six metres in diameter. These were not simple structures: the outer wall of each house was formed from two concentric rings of posts set roughly a metre apart, with the gap between them packed with mud to form an insulating barrier. At the centre of each dwelling was a hearth, and beside each hearth a rubbish pit, a detail that gives the site a quiet domesticity across the millennia. The pottery recovered was Neolithic in character, though later material in the upper levels confirmed that people continued to occupy the site into the Bronze Age, leaving traces across a span that may run to thousands of years.

Lough Gur is one of the most archaeologically dense areas in Ireland, and Knockadoon peninsula rewards slow, attentive walking. Site C lies east of the better-known Site A. The rocky outcrops that once defined the settlement's northern and western limits are still visible in the landscape, and understanding that the ancient occupants chose this shelf precisely because of its gradient, its shelter, and its southerly light makes the ground underfoot feel considerably less abstract.