It measures at least 1.7 metres in diameter and stands to a height of roughly 0.9 metres, the walls built in drystone, meaning without mortar, using carefully placed stones that rely on their own weight and fit for stability. It is modest to the point of near-invisibility in the landscape, and that is precisely what makes it worth pausing over.

Structures of this kind are loosely termed hut sites, a broad category that covers a range of small, roughly circular enclosures found across upland and coastal areas of Ireland. Their dates and functions vary considerably. Some are associated with early medieval settlement or seasonal pastoral activity, the sheltering of a person tending livestock on summer grazing ground. Others may be considerably older. Without excavation it is rarely possible to say much with confidence about any individual example, and this one on the slopes above Fán is no exception. What the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula recorded here is a survival, however partial, of a built form that once had a human purpose on this hillside.