The structure is only 2.3 metres in diameter, its drystone walls surviving to a height of around 0.7 metres, with rubble from the collapsed upper courses scattered both inside and around the perimeter. What makes this site quietly arresting is not the hut itself, modest as it is, but the fact that it is not alone. Three further hut sites cluster within 35 metres of this one, and relict field boundaries, the faint outlines of enclosures that once divided this upland into something approaching a working landscape, survive in the immediate vicinity.

Drystone construction, in which stones are laid without mortar and rely on careful placement and weight for their stability, was common across Irish uplands for centuries, used for everything from field walls to temporary shelters for those following seasonal grazing patterns. The practice of moving livestock to higher ground in summer, known as booleying, left clusters of small huts across many Irish mountain slopes, and the grouping here on Knockowen is consistent with that kind of seasonal occupation. The blanket bog that now covers much of this terrain has, in a sense, preserved the lower courses of the wall by gradually growing around and over them, leaving the stones protruding just above the surface rather than sinking entirely from view.