Most walkers heading up Carrauntoohil pass within metres of them without a second glance, focused instead on the loose scree and the climb ahead. But these are the remains of ancient circular huts, each barely two metres across, their walls surviving in places to no more than a single course of stone.

The site sits at the head of the Hag's Glen, on the south-eastern flank of Carrauntoohil in Co. Kerry, in a valley whose name carries its own mythology. The two hut foundations are roughly circular in plan, the larger measuring approximately two metres by 1.8 metres, with walls around 0.8 metres thick. A short distance downslope to the north-east, a second, slightly smaller structure has partially collapsed on its downhill side, a common fate for dry-stone construction on uneven mountain terrain. The upper courses of the better-preserved example have been rebuilt at some point, which means what survives is a combination of original fabric and later intervention. The walls themselves stand only about 0.3 metres high, low enough that they can easily be mistaken for natural tumbles of rock unless you are looking deliberately. Circular stone huts of this type are found widely across the Irish uplands and are generally associated with seasonal use, whether by herders moving livestock to summer pasture or by travellers seeking basic shelter on exposed routes.

The location is itself telling. This corner of the MacGillycuddy's Reeks was not wilderness in any straightforward sense; the Hag's Glen was a corridor, and the Devil's Ladder a well-worn line of ascent. Whoever built and used these small enclosures was almost certainly making practical use of a passage through difficult ground rather than retreating from the world entirely.