The building was recorded in the 1940s as a grianaun, a term sometimes translated as a sunny bower or sunroom, a kind of upper room or sheltered enclosure associated with early Irish domestic life. That a word so evocative of light and leisure should attach itself to a low earthen ring in a Kerry field says something about how layered the memory of these places can be.

The hut measures roughly six metres in diameter, defined by a bank about 1.2 metres wide and 0.4 metres high. It sits at the centre of a rath, which is an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period, typically bounded by one or more earthen banks and ditches, and used as a defended homestead by farming families from roughly the fifth to the twelfth century. The 1940s description recorded the structure as being about sixty feet in circumference and fifteen feet in diameter, marked with large stones. Two hollows in the eastern arc of the bank may indicate the entrance to a souterrain, an underground passage or chamber built beneath raths, usually interpreted as a place of storage, refuge, or both. The hut itself appears on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1846, meaning it was visible and recognisable as a distinct feature nearly two centuries ago, even as the vocabulary used to describe it shifted between surveys.