What survives is an earthen bank, between 0.4 and 0.7 metres high and up to 1.7 metres wide, tracing the outline of a structure that once stood at the centre of a rectilinear cashel. A cashel is a stone-walled enclosure, typically of early medieval date, used to define and defend a settlement or farmstead, and the fact that this hut-site sits at the centre of one suggests it was the primary dwelling within the enclosure.

The site at Gleninsheen sits within a cashel that is itself recorded separately, and the relationship between the two is part of what makes this particular spot archaeologically legible. The hut-site is oval in plan, a form common in early Irish settlement archaeology, where circular and oval structures built from earth, timber, or stone were the standard domestic unit. A second possible hut-site lies approximately ten metres to the south-southwest, tucked into the southwest corner of the same enclosure, hinting that more than one structure may have shared this small defended space at some point in its occupation.