A geophysical survey conducted in June 2000 indicated that large quantities of stone lay buried just east of the memorial church.

Students from Saint Mary's University began excavations in May 2001, and archaeological work at this location has continued every summer since.

The first major discovery the students made was a jumbled concentration of stones. Since there was no pattern to these stones, they were recorded and removed. More stones were found underneath. As the students removed these stones, portions of unmortared stone foundation walls came to light. These were the ruins of an old building!

In 2003, the students made a new discovery when they extended their excavations to the north of these ruins. Here, their excavation trench revealed a dark soil-stain feature cut into the orange-brown subsoil and leading northward from the building. It appeared that someone had long ago dug a trench here and then filled in. Removing this fill, the students discovered a series of flat stones, laid side by side, overlapping slightly.

By the end of the 2004 field season, portions of three dry-stone foundation walls had been revealed, and a large quantity of stone and earth fill had been removed from the center of the structure. The students had excavated the interior of the structure to a depth of over 1m, and its width (east-west) could be measured as 5m. The structure's north-south dimensions remain unknown, as the southern foundation wall has not yet been revealed.

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