This is not an uncommon trick in Irish vernacular building, using what the landscape already offers, but the effect here is particularly direct. The structure is modest almost to the point of invisibility: a sub-rectangular space measuring just 5.5 metres east to west and 1.7 metres north to south, barely enough to shelter a person and a few belongings.

The remaining three sides, to the north, west, and east, are enclosed by a dry-stone wall, the technique of stacking unmortared stone that has been used across Ireland for millennia and that tends to outlast more elaborate construction methods. Here the wall survives to roughly half a metre in height. Occasional large natural slabs are incorporated into the northern stretch, suggesting the builders worked pragmatically with whatever stone lay close to hand on the slope. The site was identified by John Cronin and Associates during survey work carried out prior to wind farm development in the Ballagh townland area, under licence from the relevant authorities. A nearby feature shares the same approach of borrowing from a rock outcropping to form a structural element, which hints that whoever used this hillside had a consistent, practical understanding of the terrain.