A clochan is a dry-stone beehive hut, built without mortar using corbelling techniques that have roots in early medieval Irish monastic tradition, and they appear across the Dingle Peninsula in considerable numbers. What makes this particular example unusual is a persistent uncertainty about its basic structure: it has been described as double, or possibly quadruple, a distinction that carries real architectural weight when a building is made of nothing but carefully stacked stone.

The ambiguity was recorded by R. A. S. Macalister in 1899, who noted the double, or possibly quadruple, form without resolving the question. Whether the structure comprises two conjoined cells or four has apparently remained open since then. Such compound clochans are not unknown on the peninsula, where clusters of cells sometimes formed small monastic enclosures or seasonal shelters, but the uncertainty Macalister flagged suggests the remains were already difficult to read clearly by the close of the nineteenth century, likely due to collapse or overgrowth obscuring the full ground plan.