Hut sites, broadly speaking, are the remains of simple structures used for shelter or seasonal occupation, sometimes associated with farming activity, transhumance, or the movement of people and animals across upland terrain. They tend not to announce themselves with dramatic stonework or height; instead they survive as slight depressions, earthen banks, or spreads of stone that require some knowledge and a certain quality of light to read properly.

Farranyharpy is a quiet townland in Sligo, a county whose landscape ranges from coastal plain to mountain and bog, and which carries an unusually dense record of prehistoric and early historic activity. Hut sites in this part of the west of Ireland can range in date across a considerable span, from the Bronze Age through to the medieval period, though without excavation or detailed survey it is rarely possible to assign a confident date to any individual example. The name Farranyharpy itself has the feel of an anglicisation of an Irish original, though the precise meaning is not documented here.