The structure measures roughly 6.6 metres in diameter, which gives a sense of just how compact life inside would have been. The walls, where they survive, stand no higher than half a metre, and a good portion of the stonework has been robbed away over the centuries, a fate common to ancient field monuments across Ireland as farmers and builders helped themselves to convenient ready-cut material.

The hut site belongs to a broader cluster of ancient features in this part of County Cork. Within about fifty metres to the north-east there is a separate enclosure, and another lies roughly thirty metres to the west, suggesting that this was once a more organised landscape of settlement or land use rather than an isolated structure. Hut sites of this general type, defined by contiguous upright slabs set on edge to form a low circular wall, are found across Ireland and are associated broadly with prehistoric and early medieval occupation, though without excavation it is rarely possible to assign a precise date to any individual example. The level interior at Derreen still has stones embedded in it, hinting at a floor surface that has largely been overtaken by pasture. Rubble scattered along the north-east to south-west perimeter marks where the wall fabric has slumped or been disturbed.