What makes the site at Coarha Beg unusual is not any single structure but the layering of them: a polygonal hut, a circular hut, an annex, and a souterrain all grouped together, with the more recent remains of a large rectangular house sitting just to the south-east. That juxtaposition, early medieval forms alongside something far more recent, gives the site an almost accidental quality, as though different inhabitants returned to the same well-drained ground across generations without quite acknowledging one another.

The polygonal hut is the more distinctive of the two main structures. Polygonal forms are relatively uncommon in early Irish settlement archaeology, where circular huts were far more typical; their presence can sometimes indicate an unusual function or a later phase of construction. Accompanying it is an annex, a small attached chamber or enclosure, and a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage that was typically used in early medieval Ireland for storage or, in times of threat, concealment. The circular hut to the south survives in poorer condition, its foundations reduced to a sod-covered mound of stone collapse measuring roughly 4.7 metres by 4.3 metres across. The survey compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan for their archaeological study of the Iveragh Peninsula, published by Cork University Press in 1996, records the full complex and remains the principal source for understanding it.