A clochaun, or clochán, is a dry-stone beehive hut of the kind associated with early medieval monastic and pastoral life in the west of Ireland, built without mortar using a corbelling technique in which each course of stone slightly overhangs the one below until the walls close to form a roof. This example sits within a circular stone-walled enclosure, the hut placed centrally inside it, giving the whole arrangement a deliberate, considered quality that goes beyond simple shelter.

The clochaun itself measures 5.2 metres in internal diameter, with walls that are slightly corbelled and stand to a maximum height of 1.95 metres. The exterior is stepped rather than smooth: a lower grass-grown plinth of earth and stones, between 0.75 and 1.2 metres wide and up to 1.15 metres high, forms the base, with the upper wall rising a further 0.8 metres above it and measuring between one and 1.2 metres in width. Inside, at ground level on the south-western wall-face, there is a small rectangular niche, 0.25 metres high, 0.45 metres wide and 0.7 metres deep, of the kind that might have served as a shelf or recess for a lamp or a small object of devotion. The original entrance faced south-east, though that section of the wall has since been broken away, and the fallen material has accumulated into a low platform of earth and stone at the threshold. The structure was documented in detail by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, a comprehensive inventory of the remarkable concentration of ancient remains in this part of Kerry.

The location is itself part of the structure's meaning. Mountain passes were practical corridors through difficult terrain, and a building positioned in one, close to a river ford, would have been encountered regularly by anyone moving through this landscape. The niche in the inner wall and the enclosure surrounding the hut suggest this was more than a temporary windbreak; the care taken in its construction points to something intended to last, and used with some regularity, even if what exactly it was used for has long since passed out of memory.