The hut is modest in scale, measuring roughly 5.4 metres along its north-west to south-east axis and 3.5 metres across, its outline marked by an earthen bank about 1.7 metres wide and less than half a metre high. What makes it quietly unusual is that structural arrangement: rather than standing independently, it borrows the inner face of the ringfort's own bank as its north-east wall.

A ringfort, to give a brief gloss, is an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period, typically defined by one or more circular earthen banks and ditches, and they are among the most common archaeological features in the Irish landscape. The hut at Ballinriddera sits within such an enclosure, suggesting that at some point after the ringfort was established, someone chose to subdivide or exploit the interior, constructing a dwelling against the existing bank rather than raising an entirely new structure. This kind of secondary use, building within or against an earlier monument, was not uncommon, though each instance tells its own small story about continuity of settlement and the practical reuse of ready-made earthworks. The site today lies in pasture land on that north-westward slope of the ridge, the banks low and grassed over, easy to walk past without a second glance.