What makes it quietly anomalous is its doorway. Early Christian oratories in Ireland almost universally place their entrance in the west wall, orienting the worshipper to face east towards the altar. Here, the lintelled doorway, just over half a metre wide and a little over a metre high, is cut into the east wall instead. The consequence is architectural: the east window, which in a conventional oratory sits centrally in that liturgically significant wall, has been pushed awkwardly towards the south-east corner to make room.

The building is small even by the modest standards of early monastic cells, measuring roughly four metres by three internally, with walls between one and one and a quarter metres thick, preserved to a height of around 1.7 metres. Unlike some comparable structures of the period, there is no evidence of corbelling, the technique by which courses of stone are stepped inward to form a roof without mortar or timber. The west wall shows repair work from about 0.4 metres above floor level, likely the result of pressure from rising ground outside rather than any dramatic event. Below the east window, a thin projecting stone flag measuring roughly 25 by 16 centimetres is thought to have served as an altar stone. A later enclosure wall extends westward from the oratory, though it is not considered contemporary with the structure itself; it actually obscures the external south-west angle of the building, suggesting it was added at a different period. The site forms part of a broader Early Christian monastic settlement on this 199-acre island, set against a landscape that would have offered Atlantic isolation in considerable measure to whoever chose to pray here.