The hut site at Cloontreem measures just 2.1 metres in diameter, its enclosing wall still standing to a height of roughly half a metre along its north-east to southern arc, while the western section has slumped gradually downhill over what may be centuries of neglect. What gives the site a quiet ingenuity is the way it was originally constructed: the ground on the eastern, uphill side was cut away to a depth of about 0.4 metres, while the western side was built up slightly, producing an interior floor that is almost perfectly level despite the slope it occupies. Someone, at some point, went to considerable trouble to make this small space habitable.

The site sits within a network of relict field boundaries, the ghostly outlines of an agricultural landscape that has long since fallen out of use. Hut sites of this kind are a common enough feature of the Irish upland record, the remains of small shelters associated variously with seasonal grazing, agricultural labour, or earlier permanent settlement. Their precise dating is rarely straightforward without excavation, and this example is no exception. The surrounding field system, likewise abandoned, suggests a landscape that was once actively managed and then, at some unknown point, given over to the rough undulating pasture it remains today. The wall construction, with a thickness of 0.6 metres, is modest but sturdy, and the care taken to level the interior hints at a structure intended for regular rather than purely incidental use.