Corbelling is a technique in which each successive course of stone projects slightly inward over the one below, creating a self-supporting vault without mortar. What makes this chamber particularly curious is the implication of its missing roof: with no surviving entrance in any wall, whoever used it must have climbed in from above. The structure sits inside the eastern bank of a rath, a type of early medieval farmstead enclosure typically defined by earthen banks and ditches, though this one is considerably more substantial than most.

Cathair na Gaoithe, which appears as 'Cahernageehee' on the Ordnance Survey Fair Plan and in the associated name books for the Kilcrohane district, is a bivallate rath, meaning it has two concentric banks rather than the single bank more commonly seen. The site occupies rough, outcrop-broken mountainous ground and looks south over Darrynane Bay and the Beara Peninsula. Its two banks are separated by a flat-bottomed fosse, a defensive ditch, 3.5 metres wide. The inner bank is the more impressive of the two, rising to 3.1 metres on its southern exterior face, with a basal width of up to 9 metres and what appears to be a step-like feature along its eroded crest. The entrance lies at the south-east, where a causeway 3.9 metres wide crosses the fosse and threads through both banks via a formal passage stretching 12.4 metres in total. The passage is lined with upright slabs averaging roughly 85 centimetres high, and a large flat slab, apparently once a lintel, now lies fallen across the floor. The detailed survey of this site was carried out by Aidan O'Sullivan and John Sheehan and published in their archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula by Cork University Press in 1996.