It is, in fact, a sweathouse, a type of pre-modern therapeutic structure once used across Ireland as a kind of rudimentary sauna. A fire would be lit inside to heat the stones, the embers raked out, and a person or persons would crawl in through the low entrance to sweat out fevers, rheumatism, or other ailments. The entrance here measures just 1.25 metres high and 0.6 metres wide, suggesting entry was never dignified.

The structure is drystone-built, meaning the stones are laid without mortar, relying entirely on careful placement for stability. Its beehive shape is achieved through corbelling, a technique in which each course of stones projects slightly inward over the one below until the courses meet at the top, here sealed with four small flat slabs. The sweathouse appears on the Ordnance Survey maps of both 1836 and 1876, which means it was already a known feature of the landscape well before serious archaeological attention was paid to such structures. Richardson noted it in 1939, placing it within a tradition of vernacular healing architecture that was largely rural, largely undocumented, and largely gone by the time anyone thought to record it systematically.