Not much remains: a single stretch of east wall, 7.25 metres long, preserved as a stony bank no more than forty centimetres high and a metre and a half wide, with the rest of the structure reduced to an irregular scatter of stones across the interior. That partial wall is the clearest evidence that someone once built something deliberate here, within the shelter of the surrounding enclosure, on a narrow band of flat ground caught between the sea and the mountain.

The enclosure itself is a univallate rath, a type of defended farmstead once common across early medieval Ireland, typically consisting of a single circular earthen bank, sometimes accompanied by a ditch, enclosing a domestic space. Raths vary considerably in what they contained; some had timber buildings, others stone, and many leave only faint traces. At Doire Mhór Thoir, the probable house-site sits at the centre of the rath's interior, which is where the main dwelling in such an enclosure would ordinarily be expected. The date of the structure has not been determined, and the relationship between the house and the rath, whether they are truly contemporary, remains uncertain. The site was recorded as part of the Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey, published by J. Cuppage in 1986 under the title Corca Dhuibhne, a substantial catalogue of the archaeology of this densely layered corner of County Kerry.