The structure in question is a clochan, the term for the dry-stone, corbelled dwellings associated with early Celtic monasticism, built without mortar by stacking flat stones inward until they form a domed or beehive-shaped roof. They appear in various forms across early Christian Ireland, and their presence beside a church suggests that whatever community once occupied this spot was rooted in something older and more austere than the medieval stonework nearby.

Writing in 1905, the historian William Carrigan noted that outside the graveyard wall of Clonamery church, at a distance of roughly twenty-five to thirty metres to the west and at the highest point of the ridge, foundations of two such circular structures were visible. He recorded one as measuring approximately 4.42 metres in diameter, the other around 3.35 metres. Both were already reduced to foundations by his time, but the detail he preserved is precise enough to be useful. Today, only one of the two clochans is visible at ground level. The second, which Carrigan suggested lay close to the first, has since sunk below the surface. Several stones protrude from the ridge top, though these appear to be natural bedrock rather than structural remains.

The surviving clochan sits in open pasture to the west of the church's west gable, at the northwest end of the ridge. The ground around it is uneven, and the distinction between buried archaeology and exposed rock is not always obvious, which makes the upstanding structure all the more worth locating. The juxtaposition of the medieval church and these earlier, simpler cells points to a long continuity of sacred use on this particular piece of elevated ground.