It measures just 4.1 metres in diameter, its perimeter defined partly by a low drystone wall, the kind built without mortar by setting stones carefully against one another, and partly by a grass-covered earthen bank. The wall survives to a height of only about 0.3 metres and a thickness of around 0.7 metres, and much of even that is now grassed over. A slight lowering of the bank on the south-west side suggests where an entrance may once have been.

Hut sites of this kind are scattered across the upland areas of Kerry and the wider Irish landscape, and they are not easy to date without excavation. Some belong to the early medieval period, when small farming communities moved livestock to summer pastures in a practice known as transhumance, constructing temporary shelters called booley huts for the season. Others may be prehistoric. What can be said of this particular example is that someone chose this sheltered terrace deliberately, facing south-west into whatever warmth the Kerry climate offered, on a mountain that would have provided grazing above the valley floor. The site at Glanrastel is modest by any measure, but its modesty is precisely the point: it records a human presence that left almost nothing behind.