It is roughly circular, perhaps five metres across at its widest, with walls close to a metre thick and built without mortar. The interior floor is flat but depressed below the surrounding terrain, a feature that would have helped retain heat and shelter the occupant from wind coming off the mountains to the north.

The structure is thought to be corbelled, meaning the walls would have been built with each course of stones projecting slightly inward over the one below, eventually closing to form a roof without the need for timber or thatch. This technique has a long history in Ireland, used in early ecclesiastical buildings and in the clocháns associated with monastic life along the western seaboard, though it also appears in more utilitarian shelters whose age and purpose are harder to pin down. The walls here are described as crudely constructed, which sets it apart from the more precisely finished examples; whoever built it was working quickly, or practically, rather than to any architectural ideal. The site was noted by O'Brien in 1970 and later recorded in the Archaeological Inventory of County Cork.