It stands nearly two metres high and measures somewhere between 8.15 and 8.85 metres in diameter, the slight irregularity in that measurement hinting at a long and complicated life. What makes it genuinely curious is the absence of corbelling in what survives. Corbelling is the technique by which stone layers are progressively stepped inward to form a self-supporting beehive roof, common in early Irish ecclesiastical and domestic structures across this part of Kerry. Here, there is no trace of it, leaving open the question of how, or whether, the structure was ever fully roofed.

The site sits within the townland of Cathair Deargáin Thuaidh, a name that places it in the broader landscape of Corca Dhuibhne, the Irish-speaking heartland of the Dingle Peninsula. The structure was recorded and described by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey, a landmark piece of fieldwork that catalogued the remarkable density of early remains across this corner of County Kerry. What Cuppage noted, beyond the dimensions and the missing corbelling, was considerable evidence of repair and rebuilding over time. That detail quietly shifts the way you read the place. This was not simply a structure abandoned and left to decay; it was returned to, worked on, altered, presumably because it continued to serve some purpose across multiple generations or phases of use.