A cashel is a dry-stone ringfort, a type of enclosed settlement common across early medieval Ireland, and a souterrain is an underground passage or chamber, typically cut into the earth or built from stone, thought to have served for storage or refuge. What makes Lios Na Caolbhuí quietly arresting is precisely its ordinariness: this was simply where people lived, worked, and kept their food safe, in a modest cluster of structures that have barely risen above the grass.

Three hut foundations can still be traced within the enclosure. One of them, set against the inner face of the cashel wall at the south-south-west, is oval or sub-rectangular in plan and measures roughly 3.75 metres by 2.27 metres internally, enclosed by a stony bank no more than 0.2 metres high. A gap at its eastern end is thought to mark the original entrance. The details come from J. Cuppage's 1986 archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, Corca Dhuibhne, which systematically recorded the dense concentration of early remains across this part of west Kerry. That density is itself worth noting: the Dingle Peninsula preserves one of the highest concentrations of early medieval and prehistoric monuments anywhere in Ireland, and Lios Na Caolbhuí is one small, unshowy node within that larger pattern of long habitation.