A clochán is a dry-stone corbelled hut, built without mortar, with the walls angled inward until the courses meet at the top, a technique associated with early medieval monastic and hermit settlement across the west of Ireland. Here, though, whatever once rose above ground has long since disappeared, and the clearing of surrounding farmland has left a mound of loose stone that both marks and obscures the earlier remains beneath.

The foundations were noted by R. A. S. Macalister in 1899, at a time when antiquarians were systematically moving through Kerry recording features that local farming practice was already beginning to alter or bury. The site at Fán appears in the Dingle Peninsula Archaeological Survey compiled by J. Cuppage in 1986, which drew together earlier observations alongside fieldwork across the Corca Dhuibhne region. By that point the field clearance cairn had already become the dominant feature, and the clochán foundations were recorded as surviving beneath or alongside it rather than as visible standing structures.