Known as Clochán na gCat, it is a clochán, the Irish term for a dry-stone corbelled hut of early medieval origin, in which courses of stone are laid so that each slightly overhangs the one below, eventually closing into a roof without the use of mortar. This one measures 5.8 metres in diameter, and the circular stone-walled enclosure surrounding it stretches to 13 metres across. The concentric arrangement, one circle contained within another, gives the site an almost diagrammatic quality that sets it apart from the more scattered clocháin found across the peninsula.

The site was noted by George Victor Du Noyer in 1858 and again by R.A.S. Macalister in 1899, two figures who were among the most active recorders of early Irish field monuments in the nineteenth century. Their attention to it suggests the structure was already considered significant, even within a landscape as densely layered with early Christian and prehistoric remains as the Corca Dhuibhne peninsula. The name, which translates roughly as the clochán of the cats, is one of those quietly enigmatic place-names that accumulates folklore without ever fully explaining itself.