The walls have largely collapsed, the interior has given itself over to overgrowth, and at first glance it reads simply as a rough tumble of stone. Look more carefully, though, and the plan of a drystone hut becomes legible, roughly five metres across, with walls that were once about one and a half metres thick and a probable entrance facing the south-west.

Drystone construction, which uses no mortar and relies entirely on the careful fitting of stone against stone, was a technique employed across many periods of Irish prehistory and early history, from the Bronze Age through to the early medieval period. Hut sites of this kind appear across the Iveragh Peninsula, that long arm of County Kerry that reaches into the Atlantic between Dingle Bay and the Kenmare River. This particular example sits on the southern side of the Finnihy river, a short distance south-east of Lough Barfinnihy, in a landscape that would always have been marginal and wet. The choice of even a modest elevation for the building suggests a practical awareness of the terrain, placing the structure just above the worst of the bog. Whether the hut served as a dwelling, a seasonal shelter for those moving cattle through upland pasture, or something else entirely is not recorded.