It is a clochan, the Irish term for a dry-stone beehive hut built using corbelling, a technique in which each course of stones projects slightly inward over the one below until the courses eventually meet at the top, forming a self-supporting dome without the need for mortar or timber. What makes this particular example quietly notable is its internal diameter of 4.1 metres, a measurement recorded by the archaeologist R. A. S. Macalister in 1899, suggesting a structure of reasonable size by the standards of this building type.

Clochans of this kind are strongly associated with early Christian monastic settlements along the western seaboard of Ireland, though they were also used as secular shelters for those working on upland pastures. The Dingle Peninsula has an unusually dense concentration of them, and this one, documented in J. Cuppage's thorough 1986 archaeological survey of the Corca Dhuibhne region, sits within a landscape that has been farmed and inhabited since prehistory. The local name, Leachtán na Bhuailtín Doimhin, connects it to the idea of a booley, a temporary summer pasture where cattle were grazed, suggesting this corbelled structure may have served as a shelter during the seasonal movement of livestock to higher ground, a practice known as transhumance that persisted in parts of rural Ireland well into the modern era.