One of them is D-shaped, an unusual form that turns out to have a practical explanation: its straight eastern wall is not a wall at all in the conventional sense, but the outer face of a neighbouring hut built directly against it. Two structures, in other words, sharing a boundary, their builders making deliberate use of what was already standing.

The hut measures roughly 2.2 metres east to west, with that shared eastern side running about 4 metres north to south. The walls, built to a thickness of around 0.6 metres and still standing to a height of 0.8 metres in places, are beginning to collapse at the upper courses. At the south-west, the interior is partially cut into the slope itself, dropping about 0.8 metres into the hillside, a technique that would have provided both shelter and a degree of structural stability in exposed upland terrain. A third hut site lies roughly 10 metres to the west-northwest, suggesting that what survives here is not an isolated dwelling but a fragment of something more organised, a small settlement or seasonal encampment tucked into the contours of the mountain. Hut sites of this kind are found across upland Ireland and are generally associated with early medieval or prehistoric habitation, often connected to transhumance, the seasonal movement of people and livestock to higher grazing ground during summer months.

The Reeks are a challenging landscape to move through, and the north-facing aspect of this particular terrace would have made it shadowed and exposed for much of the year. That three structures were built here at all, sharing walls and cut into the slope for warmth, says something about the effort involved in maintaining a presence in these mountains, and the ingenuity brought to making a harsh place workable.