The better-documented of the pair measures roughly 2.5 metres across, with walls surviving to a height of around half a metre; compact dimensions that suggest a simple, single-roomed shelter rather than any permanent dwelling. What makes the pairing quietly arresting is the proximity. Two hut sites set so close together raise the obvious question of whether they were used simultaneously, by the same people, for related purposes, or whether one simply replaced the other over time.

Hut sites of this kind are a familiar, if underappreciated, feature of the Irish upland landscape. They are generally interpreted as seasonal shelters associated with transhumance, the practice of moving livestock to higher pastures in summer, though some examples may relate to other forms of temporary occupation such as herding, turf-cutting, or small-scale agriculture on marginal ground. The Mullaghmesha structures were recorded by J. Kiely and published in the fifth volume of the Archaeological Inventory of County Cork in 2009. Beyond those bare measurements and the note of a second structure a few metres to the north, the documentary record for this particular site is thin. Their age has not been formally established, and without excavation, the question of when they were built and by whom remains open.