A clochan is a dry-stone beehive hut, a corbelled structure built without mortar, in which each ring of stones projects slightly inward over the one below until the courses meet at a single capstone. These structures are closely associated with early Christian monastic life in the west of Ireland, though some examples are considerably older, and the Dingle Peninsula has a higher concentration of them than almost anywhere else in the country.

The sole documentary anchor here is that first-edition Ordnance Survey map, which places the clochan at Fán and gives it enough reality to be catalogued in the 1986 Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey compiled by J. Cuppage for Oidhreacht Chorca Dhuibhne. That survey remains one of the most thorough regional records of its kind, systematically documenting the extraordinary density of prehistoric and early medieval remains across Corca Dhuibhne. That this particular structure merited inclusion, even briefly, suggests it was visible and identifiable at the time of survey, though what condition it survives in today is harder to say.