It stands just 2.6 metres high and nearly four metres in diameter at its base, a proportionally odd remnant that speaks to machinery once housed here rather than any decorative or civic purpose. Beside it, the stone foundations of an engine house sit adjacent to a mineshaft, and a sub-rectangular reservoir, its banks formed from earthen mounding, occupies ground to the northwest. Together these fragments mark what was once a working industrial complex, quietly bypassed by the roads and tourists that pass through Allihies below.

The site appears on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1842, where it is labelled simply as "Engine Ho.", placing it firmly within the copper-mining era that transformed this corner of West Cork during the nineteenth century. Engine houses of this type were built to shelter beam engines, typically Cornish in design and operation, which pumped water from the mineshafts to keep the workings passable. The Allihies copper mines drew significant investment and labour during that period, and the coastal location of this particular complex suggests ore or equipment may have moved by sea as well as overland. The reservoir to the northwest would have supplied water for the engines or for ore-processing on site.