Fulling mills were industrial rather than agricultural, used to clean and thicken freshly woven wool cloth by pounding it repeatedly in water mixed with fuller's earth or other substances. The process transformed loose, open fabric into a denser, more durable material, and it required a reliable and forceful water source, exactly what a fast-running river cutting through a narrow valley could provide. That this one survives at all, even as a ruin, is a small reminder that the remote corners of West Cork were once bound into the same cloth-finishing trades that animated much of rural Ireland.

What remains is a modest structure, measuring roughly 5.3 metres east to west and 4.85 metres north to south. Along the eastern wall, a wheel-pit 1.35 metres wide marks where the waterwheel once sat, channelling the river's flow into rotational force to drive the fulling stocks. The mill's position on a steep valley side was deliberate; the drop in terrain helped generate the head of water needed to turn the wheel with enough energy to do the work. The dressed stone of a structure this size would not have been out of place in a working rural landscape of the eighteenth or nineteenth century, though no specific date of construction is recorded for this particular site.