The structure is built into the natural gradient of the hillside, a technique that would have offered both stability and shelter, and along its northern inner face the drystone wall still reaches 1.8 metres in height. Elsewhere the wall has dropped to around 0.3 metres, and along the southern side it has vanished entirely. The hut measures 4.8 metres in diameter, modest enough for a single family or perhaps a seasonal shelter for those working the upland.

What makes the site more than an ordinary early medieval hut are the traces of a souterrain that once accompanied it. A souterrain is an underground stone-lined passage or chamber, typically associated with ringforts and early settlement sites in Ireland, and thought to have served for storage, refuge, or both. Here, the local community has long referred to the place as a fort, which suggests that the circular enclosure and its underground component were understood collectively as a settlement of significance, even after the original function had faded from memory. That souterrain, however, is no longer accessible: it was filled in roughly forty years ago, a fate that befell many such features across rural Ireland, usually for reasons of safety around grazing livestock. Its existence is now recorded rather than experienced, leaving the hut itself to carry the full weight of what was once a more complex site. The archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula, compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan and published by Cork University Press in 1996, documents both features together, preserving the outline of something that is no longer entirely there.