The word "said to be" does a lot of work here. These are not excavated ruins with a confirmed ground plan, but rather a handful of stones that have held a name and a memory long enough to be recorded.

A hermitage, in the early Irish monastic context, was typically a small, spare retreat where a monk or anchorite could withdraw from the wider community for prayer and solitude, sometimes attached to a larger monastery, sometimes entirely isolated. The connection to St. Flann gives the site its local identity, and the proximity to Toberflyn, a holy well whose name almost certainly derives from the same saint, suggests a cluster of early Christian association in this corner of Kerry. Holy wells were frequently linked to founding figures of local churches or monastic communities, and the pairing of a well with a nearby hermitage, however ruinous, reflects a pattern found across Ireland. The detail comes from O'Hare, writing in 1996, who noted the tradition in passing, preserving what might otherwise have slipped entirely from the record.