What survives is a D-shaped hut site, a form of early enclosure defined by a curved bank on three sides and a straight edge to the north, the whole thing measuring just over four metres across. The bank itself barely rises above the surrounding pasture, reaching only fifteen centimetres in height and less than a metre wide, with occasional stones breaking the surface where the earthwork has worn thin. It is the kind of monument that rewards patience and a low sun.

Hut sites of this type are among the more enigmatic categories of early Irish archaeology. The D-shaped plan, with its straight northern wall, recurs across the Irish coastal and upland landscape and is generally associated with early medieval settlement, though precise dating without excavation is difficult. What makes the Canalough example quietly remarkable is not the site itself in isolation but the company it keeps. Another hut site lies roughly forty metres to the west, and a third sits only five metres to the east, so close that the two structures would have been practically adjacent. Whether these represent a small contemporary cluster of dwellings, successive phases of reuse, or something else entirely is unknown, but the density of remains along this rough pasture ridge beside the sea suggests the spot was returned to, or continuously occupied, over some period of time.