It is, in fact, the remains of a hut site, roughly 3.6 metres in diameter, its outline preserved by a grass-covered bank of earth and stone around half a metre wide and just over a metre high. That a structure so modest in scale has survived at all is partly down to a practical piece of ancient engineering: the eastern side of the hut was cut directly into the hillslope, and a series of upright stone slabs, each standing about 1.1 metres tall, were set in place to hold back the scarp. The hill itself became one of the walls.

Hut sites of this kind are scattered across the Irish uplands and coastal margins, and they are notoriously difficult to date with precision without excavation. They may belong to any period from the Bronze Age through to the medieval, and were used variously as seasonal shelters for people moving livestock to higher ground, as more permanent habitations, or as ancillary structures attached to nearby farmsteads. This particular example faces west-northwest, and what appears to be a slight break in the bank on that side may mark where the entrance once stood, oriented, perhaps deliberately, towards the bay below. The use of the natural hillside as a retaining wall rather than building a full circuit of masonry suggests someone who knew the ground well and worked with it rather than against it.