It is modest in scale, just 4.3 metres in diameter and surviving to a height of only 0.6 metres, yet the care visible in its construction is still legible. Large, block-like boulders were set upright along the outer wall-face, running from south to north, a technique that gave the wall, which is 1.3 metres thick, a distinctive character. Stone collapse has spread across the interior, and the whole structure is now heavily overgrown, which makes it easy to miss from a distance.

This is a drystone hut, built without mortar, relying entirely on the careful placing and weighting of stone. Structures of this type are found across the Iveragh Peninsula in south Kerry, though their precise dating is often difficult to establish without excavation. They are generally associated with seasonal or agricultural use, places where people sheltered while tending livestock on upland or marginal ground, though some may be considerably older, connected to earlier phases of settlement. Running northwest from the hut for roughly eight metres is a stretch of walling that may belong to the same period of construction, suggesting this was not simply a lone shelter but possibly part of a small enclosure or a compound of some kind. The full purpose and date of the site remain uncertain, but the combination of the upright boulder technique and the associated walling gives Gortagowan a particular character within the broader landscape of Kerry's early built environment.