This ambiguity is part of what makes it interesting.

The building is a clochan, the term for a corbelled drystone hut of the kind found across the Dingle Peninsula and other parts of early Christian Ireland. Corbelling is a technique in which each successive course of flat stones is laid slightly inward of the one below, gradually closing the gap until the roof seals itself without the need for mortar or timber. The result is a structure of considerable solidity, and this example demonstrates that durability well enough: its drystone wall is 1.5 metres wide and stands to a height of 2.2 metres, enclosing an interior roughly circular in plan and 3.9 metres across. The south-facing entrance has collapsed at some point and been rebuilt, and there are signs of rebuilding elsewhere in the wall too, suggesting the structure has been maintained or repaired over a long period rather than simply left to decay. Six small niches are set into the inner face of the wall, though not all of them are considered certainly deliberate; some may be accidental gaps in the stonework rather than intentional recesses, which raises the question of what the others were originally used for, storage, perhaps, or the housing of a lamp or a small devotional object.