The shape it traces is a D, roughly four metres across its longer axis and two metres across the shorter, with one straight edge formed not by any built wall but by the near-vertical scarp of the little ridge itself. The interior sits slightly sunken below the surrounding ground, which is a common feature of early hut sites, where repeated occupation compresses and hollows the floor over time.

What makes this particular site quietly melancholy is that it is likely only half of what once existed. The prevailing interpretation is that erosion has carried away the south-eastern portion of an originally circular structure, leaving just the curving bank on the north-western arc and the natural scarp doing the work of the missing wall. The surviving bank is modest, between 0.8 and one metre wide, rising just 0.35 to 0.4 metres above the interior and barely 0.1 metres above the exterior ground level, so the whole thing reads more as a subtle earthwork than anything dramatically architectural. Eleven metres to the south-east, there is a second possible hut site, which raises the possibility that this elevated spit once supported a small cluster of activity rather than a single isolated structure. Bartragh Island itself sits within the tidal estuary where the River Moy meets Killala Bay, a stretch of water and marsh that would have offered both resources and a degree of natural isolation to anyone choosing to settle or shelter here.