The enclosure itself measures just 4.1 metres across, and the clochán within it is smaller still, a mere 2.1 metres in diameter. A clochán is a corbelled dry-stone hut, built without mortar, where each successive course of stones projects slightly inward until the walls meet at the top, forming a beehive-like cell. Structures of this kind are scattered across the Dingle Peninsula and were used variously by early Christian monks, by farmers, and by others seeking shelter or storage on the Atlantic fringes of Ireland. What makes the example at Fán worth noting is its completeness, a quality that cannot be taken for granted in structures of this age and construction.

The site was recorded by R. A. S. Macalister in 1899, placing its documentation among the earliest systematic attempts to catalogue the early medieval and prehistoric monuments of the Corca Dhuibhne region. The Dingle Peninsula, known in Irish as Corca Dhuibhne, carries one of the densest concentrations of early ecclesiastical and vernacular stone monuments in Ireland, a consequence both of the area's role as a centre of early Christian activity and of the relative durability of the local stone. Macalister's observation that the clochán was complete at the time of his visit gives the site a modest historical significance: survival in that condition was already becoming unusual by the close of the nineteenth century, as field clearances and land improvement had long been claiming such structures across the west of Ireland.