Denuded to their lowest courses or reduced entirely to mounds of collapse, they are the kind of remains that reward attention rather than announcing themselves. The largest of the three is an area of fallen stone roughly five metres across and just over half a metre high. A second, slightly to the north, is a circular spread of collapse three metres in diameter. A third survives in a different way: not a mound but a curving arc of stones, a single course still standing, tracing the arc of a wall two metres across. Between and around them, intermittent stretches of low walling suggest the complex was once more extensive than what remains.

The site was recorded as part of a wider archaeological study of the upland zones around Mount Brandon and the Paps, two of Kerry's most significant mountain landscapes. F. Coyne's 2006 publication, produced by Kerry County Council in association with Aegis Archaeology and titled 'Islands in the Clouds', examined the archaeological traces left by people who lived and worked at altitude, often seasonally, in terrain that was marginal by any practical measure. Huts of this kind, sometimes associated with booleying, the practice of moving livestock to upland pastures during summer months, are not uncommon in Irish upland archaeology, but their precise date and function are often difficult to pin down without excavation. At Derrynafinnia, the structural evidence alone survives, without associated finds or dates to anchor the site more firmly in time.