It is easy to overlook: the drystone wall has long since collapsed, its base course sunk into the peat, and rubble lies scattered around the perimeter. The interior diameter is only 2.3 metres, barely enough for a person to lie down in, and the entrance on the north-west side is defined by a single upright slab and measures less than half a metre wide. A waterfall sounds somewhere to the south-east.

This kind of structure, sometimes called a hut site, was built by setting stones without mortar, a technique known as drystone construction, and examples like this one appear across Irish uplands wherever people once grazed animals seasonally or sought temporary shelter. The location here is deliberate and telling: a terrace at the foot of a cliff offers some protection from Atlantic weather on an otherwise exposed mountain slope, and the surrounding land is described as rough mountain grazing. Whoever used this place was not building for permanence. The bog that now holds the base course in place has grown around and over the structure gradually, preserving its outline while slowly obscuring its age. No specific date has been established for the Rossmackowen site, which places it in the broad, unnamed category of upland shelters that could belong to almost any period of Irish rural history.