It is the outline of a rectangular hut site, measuring roughly 3.3 metres east to west and 2.6 metres north to south, its form softened by centuries of sod. Three metres to the north, the ground drops away to the cliff-edge of a coastal inlet. It is a slight, almost imperceptible thing in the landscape, yet its placement, on a slight elevation on the south-east facing slopes above a rocky shore, suggests deliberate siting rather than accident.

The hut is defined by an earthen bank around 85 centimetres wide and just 15 centimetres high, the kind of survival that registers more as a faint thickening of the ground than a structure. What makes the location particularly interesting is that a second hut site lies approximately 15 metres to the east, raising the possibility that Ilanebeg once supported at least a small seasonal or permanent settlement. Dursey Island itself, to which Ilanebeg is adjacent, has a long history of occupation and was the site of one of the most brutal episodes of the Nine Years War, when Donal Cam O'Sullivan Beare's followers were massacred there by English forces in 1602. Whether the hut sites on Ilanebeg relate to any specific period remains uncertain from what survives above ground, but the general form is consistent with early medieval or later vernacular occupation patterns found elsewhere along Ireland's south-west coast.