A clochan, sometimes called a beehive hut, is a small dry-stone cell built using the corbelling technique, in which courses of stone are laid so that each projects slightly inward over the one below until the walls close to form a roof without any mortar or timber. What makes this particular example curious is not just its construction method but where it sits: not beside the enclosure wall, not against it, but actually within its thickness, as though the wall itself was hollowed out or thickened around it to absorb the structure entirely.

The hut is rectangular inside, measuring roughly 2.2 metres east to west and 1.85 metres north to south, with angular internal corners, while its exterior reads as roughly circular, about 4 metres across. The walls are corbelled above one metre in height, with a splayed doorway in the south wall allowing access, and two niches cut into the east and west walls. The paved floor conceals something remarkable: two decorated cross-slabs were reused as paving stones, suggesting they had already lost their original function or location by the time the floor was laid. An annulus, a ring of additional masonry wrapping around the hut from the north-west to the south-east, provided structural reinforcement; at the north-west it bonds directly into the extended monastic enclosure wall, indicating the two features were built as part of the same phase of work. Radiocarbon dating of charcoal deposits inside places the earliest occupation in the late twelfth century. The hut is notably smaller than a second clochan on the island, situated to the east of the church, and it has been suggested that its compact scale and its integration into the enclosure wall may indicate it was reserved for the head monk of the community.

High Island is uninhabited and lies several kilometres off the Connemara mainland, accessible only by boat in suitable sea conditions. The monastic remains on the island include the church, enclosure walls, and several clochans, and the site as a whole rewards careful attention to how its various elements relate to one another in the landscape.