A clochan is a dry-stone beehive hut, built without mortar, with walls that corbel inward until they close at the top, a technique that has kept some of these structures standing for well over a thousand years. This one is circular in plan, which is the form most closely associated with early medieval monastic and hermitic life in the west of Ireland, where solitary stone cells were once scattered across coastal and upland landscapes in considerable numbers.

The structure was recorded by R.A.S. Macalister in 1899, placing it within a long tradition of antiquarian interest in the Corca Dhuibhne region, the Irish-speaking heartland of the Dingle Peninsula. The area has an unusually dense concentration of early medieval and prehistoric monuments, and a clochan of this size would have been a snug fit for one person, consistent with the ascetic ideals of the early Irish church, where a monk might occupy such a cell for prayer, study, or sleep. The diameter of 3.35 metres is modest even by the standards of these small structures, suggesting a single-occupancy cell rather than anything with a communal function.