Hidden under a midden, the accumulated debris of daily life left by early medieval inhabitants, excavators found the ghost of a circular wooden hut. What survived was largely a semicircular trench running from north-west to north-east, the southern half of the structure having been eaten away by coastal erosion. Within that trench, small thin slates had been set on edge, white quartz stones laid along its surface, and sandstone blocks arranged outside the arc, possibly as a footing for an insulating wall of sods or turf. A single post-hole on the eastern side most likely held a door jamb. A patch of horizontal slates in the western part of the floor may represent a later attempt at reflooring. The whole structure, roughly 4.8 metres in diameter, had been built of small posts and wattle, and simply decayed where it stood.

Four seasons of excavation between 1992 and 1995 uncovered approximately seventy per cent of the island, and this hut, designated Hut Site C, was among the finds documented by Marshall and Walsh. Associated with the hut was a metal-working site, a conjunction that already tells an interesting story about what this small place was used for. More striking still was the recovery of a bone motif-piece, a worked piece of bone used by craftspeople to sketch or rehearse decorative designs, this one carrying panels of interlace, triquetra knots, and bands of diagonally hatched motifs. The island's name adds another layer of uncertainty to all of this. Illaunloughan may take its name from a saint called Lochán, a figure who appears twice in the Martyrology of Oengus, written around AD 800, and whose name also appears in the Killoughane ecclesiastical site at the eastern end of the Iveragh peninsula. Alternatively, the name may simply mean island of the chaff. No historical documents clarify the matter either way. The hut site itself was conserved in 2001 and 2002, preserving what erosion and time had left behind.