Its interior measures roughly 5.5 metres east to west and 3 metres north to south, defined by a low stone wall that has settled into the landscape over an unknowable stretch of time. It is the kind of structure that rewards a second look, not because of any dramatic feature, but because of what its placement suggests about how such a space was once lived in and organised.

Cahermurphy is a cashel, a type of early medieval stone ringfort common in the west of Ireland, its enclosing wall built from dry-laid stone rather than the earthen bank more typical of raths found elsewhere in the country. The hut site abuts the cashel's northern interior, which is a fairly typical arrangement. People who lived within these enclosures often built smaller structures against the inner face of the surrounding wall, using it as a ready-made back wall and shelter from the prevailing wind. The result was a modest but practical domestic space, the kind of ancillary building that rarely survives in any great height but whose footprint can persist for centuries in the form of a low, spreading course of stone.