The walls, constructed entirely from dry-laid stone, still stand to an average height of 1.3 metres around a circular interior measuring 6.6 metres across, which is roughly the footprint of a modest modern living room. What makes the structure particularly arresting is not its size but what lies within it: a souterrain, which is an underground stone-lined passage or chamber, typically used in early medieval Ireland for storage or concealment, its entrance cut into the western half of the house floor.

The house sits in the north-eastern quadrant of a larger enclosed site, its wall built directly against the enclosing boundary as though fitted carefully into an already-established layout. The south-facing entrance, just 0.8 metres wide, is narrow enough to make entry deliberate and a little uncomfortable, which may have been entirely the point. The combination of a domestic structure with an internal souterrain suggests a household that valued secure, concealed storage close at hand, a reasonable priority in early medieval Ireland when cattle raiding and localised conflict were facts of rural life. The archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula, compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan and published by Cork University Press in 1996, records the structure as part of a broader pattern of enclosed settlements across this corner of south Kerry, a landscape that repays close attention precisely because so much of it has been left alone.