It is a corbelled drystone hut, a type of construction in which flat stones are layered inward and upward in overlapping rings until they meet at a point or crown, requiring no mortar and no timber. At 3.8 metres in diameter and still standing to a height of 1.4 metres, it is modest in scale but striking in its durability, the kind of thing that reads at first glance as a natural formation before its deliberate geometry becomes apparent.

Structures of this kind are associated with early medieval Ireland, though dating individual examples without excavation is difficult. The Dingle Peninsula, which occupies the western tip of County Kerry, is exceptionally dense with such remains, a consequence of early Christian settlement patterns and the relative absence of later development that might have cleared or buried them. The hut at Gleann Fán was recorded by J. Cuppage as part of the Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey published in 1986, a systematic effort to document the extraordinary concentration of monuments across this landscape. The surrounding area, known historically as Corca Dhuibhne, was a distinct territory whose people left behind an unusual density of physical traces, from ogham stones to promontory forts to exactly this kind of unassuming corbelled cell.