These are the remains of clochans, the dry-stone beehive huts constructed without mortar, whose corbelled walls curve inward to form a self-supporting dome. The technique is extraordinarily old, and examples survive across the Corca Dhuibhne region in varying states of completeness. Here, only the footprint remains.

The site was recorded as part of the comprehensive archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula published by Judith Cuppage in 1986, catalogued under the Curran series as number 16. That survey, covering the Ballyferriter area under the Irish-language heritage project Oidhreacht Chorca Dhuibhne, documented a landscape dense with early Christian and prehistoric remains. Clochans of this kind are closely associated with early monastic and farming life in the west of Ireland, where the absence of timber and the abundance of loose field stone made corbelled construction not just practical but logical. The two foundations at Fán represent a type once far more common across the peninsula, many examples of which have been lost to field clearance or the slow collapse of centuries.