Sweathouses were a distinctly Irish form of therapeutic structure, low stone chambers into which heated stones were placed and the entrance sealed, allowing the interior to reach an intense dry heat. People would crouch inside to treat ailments ranging from rheumatism to skin complaints, emerging to plunge into cold water nearby. The stream running west to east just below this site would have served exactly that purpose.

What makes this particular example quietly interesting is how thinly it survives in the record. It appears on the 1914 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map but not, it seems, on earlier versions, which may say more about the mapping priorities of different survey periods than about when the structure itself was in use. By the time it was recorded on the ground, it had already become an overgrown depression, measuring roughly 2.1 metres north-east to south-west and 2 metres north-west to south-east, set into the steep slope of a gorge just before a smaller stream joins the Arigna River. Farmhouses stand about 150 metres to the south-east and west, a reminder that this was not some remote wilderness retreat but a working feature of an agricultural community's everyday life.