The structure is recorded as a clochán, the Irish term for a dry-stone corbelled hut, typically oval or beehive-shaped, built without mortar by layering stones so that each course slightly overhangs the one below until the courses meet at the top. The Dingle Peninsula has one of the densest concentrations of these structures in Ireland, many of them associated with early Christian monastic activity, though others were purely domestic or agricultural in function. What remains here, catalogued as Curran number 8a, is the foundation only, the walls having long since collapsed or been robbed for other building work.

The site was recorded as part of a systematic archaeological survey of the Corca Dhuibhne area, the Irish-speaking district that covers much of the western Dingle Peninsula, published by J. Cuppage in 1986. That survey remains a foundational document for understanding the extraordinary density of early medieval and prehistoric remains in this landscape, where ringforts, souterrains, ogham stones, and ecclesiastical enclosures occur with unusual frequency within a relatively small area. The clochán foundation at Fán is a modest entry in that catalogue, but its very modesty is part of the point: not every early structure here was a monument. Many were simply where people lived and worked.