The structure is subcircular, its walls formed from a bank of earth and stone, and its interior measures roughly 1.6 metres by 1.3 metres. The bank itself stands about 0.6 metres high and is some 1.4 metres thick. These are modest dimensions by any standard, scarcely large enough for a person to lie down comfortably within.

What survives at Bunbinnia is typical of the kind of temporary or seasonal shelters found across the upland landscapes of the Iveragh Peninsula, a mountainous finger of land in south Kerry that was surveyed comprehensively by archaeologists A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan in the 1990s. Such hut sites are notoriously difficult to date with precision in the absence of excavation, but structures of this form were used across many centuries by people moving livestock through the hills, sheltering during transhumance, the seasonal practice of driving cattle to higher summer pastures. At the eastern side of the site, the remnants of a semicircular foundation hint that the building may once have had an annexe or secondary enclosure, perhaps a small pen or a secondary shelter attached to the main hut.