They are corbelled drystone huts, built without mortar, with each course of stone laid so that it projects slightly inward over the one below until the walls close into a roof. It is an ancient technique, and these examples are modest even by the standards of early Irish architecture: the larger of the two measures just over three metres in diameter and stands 1.7 metres high, while its companion is smaller still, at 2.35 metres across and 1.1 metres in height. Wall thickness runs to between one and 1.35 metres, which gives a sense of how much of the structure is wall rather than interior space.

Known locally as Cloghaunlea, or An Clochán Liath in Irish, the site sits within a landscape that has accumulated human presence for thousands of years. The Dingle Peninsula is one of the most archaeologically dense stretches of the Irish coastline, and Brandon Mountain carries particular weight in early Christian tradition, associated with the sixth-century saint Brendan the Navigator. Whether these huts belong to an early monastic or penitential context, or represent something older or more mundane, is not recorded. The structures were documented in J. Cuppage's 1986 archaeological survey of the Corca Dhuibhne region, which catalogued the extraordinary concentration of prehistoric and early medieval remains across the peninsula.