What survives here is fragmentary, but the fragments are telling: sections of the north and west walls still stand, each more than 3.4 metres long and over 1.7 metres wide, and the corbelling is still visible in both. A gap in the north-east corner may once have been an entrance or a window, though too little remains to say with certainty.

The site was recorded by Tim Robinson in 1980, and Robinson's work on the Aran Islands brought sustained attention to the kind of small, easily overlooked structures that earlier surveys had passed over. Clochans are associated with early Christian monasticism in Ireland, when hermits and communities of monks built compact stone cells on remote ground, sometimes singly, sometimes in clusters. The Aran Islands have several such remains, shaped in part by the local geology: the limestone pavement offers both building material and a surface that, once cleared, holds a structure firmly. The exposed setting on Inis Oírr, without soil cover to conceal or protect, means that what has not survived is simply gone, and what remains does so in plain sight.