Its interior measures just 1.8 metres east to west and 2.4 metres north to south, a space barely large enough to lie down in, with surviving walls still reaching 0.4 metres in height and up to 0.8 metres wide. That a structure so modest in scale should endure at all is part of what makes it worth pausing over.

The hut was documented as part of a broader upland archaeological study covering Mount Brandon and the Paps, two of Kerry's most significant upland zones. The study, led by F. Coyne and published in 2006 by Kerry County Council in association with Aegis Archaeology under the title "Islands in the clouds", surveyed the traces of human activity across these elevated and often exposed landscapes. Hut sites of this kind are thought to be associated with seasonal or temporary occupation, possibly connected to transhumance, the practice of moving livestock to higher pastures in summer months, or to the solitary lives of early Christian hermits who sought out remote terrain deliberately. Without further excavation, it is difficult to assign a precise date or function to the Derrynafinnia structure, but its proportions and construction are consistent with others found across Irish upland areas spanning the early medieval period.