The one recorded here is small, its subcircular outline measuring roughly 2.8 metres by 2.4 metres, with walls built in drystone construction, meaning no mortar, just carefully chosen stones laid against one another to hold a shape. The remaining walls stand only about a quarter of a metre high now, with a thickness of 85 centimetres, enough to suggest something once solid and purposeful.

Drystone hut clusters like these are found across Kerry and the wider west of Ireland, and their dating can be difficult to pin down without excavation. They may be associated with seasonal farming practices, particularly booleying, the old Irish custom of moving livestock to higher pastures in summer months, with herders sheltering in temporary structures nearby. Whether these particular huts at Derrycarna served such a function is not recorded, but the grouping of six is suggestive of a small, organised settlement or a place returned to repeatedly across seasons or generations. The foundations were documented as part of a comprehensive archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan and published by Cork University Press in 1996, a project that brought dozens of such quietly overlooked sites into the formal record.