That is more or less what happened. The structure's builders used medium-sized stone slabs dislodged from the exposed rock immediately to the north, incorporating the face itself as the northern boundary and saving themselves a considerable amount of labour in the process. The result is a dry-stone structure, meaning no mortar was used, built on a northwest to southeast alignment, with walls averaging around 0.8 metres high and 0.6 metres wide. Rushes have colonised part of the interior, and the damper, peatier ground begins just downslope to the south and east, suggesting whoever chose this spot was deliberate about the drainage.

The structure was identified by John Cronin and Associates during pre-development survey work carried out in the Barnastooka townland prior to a wind farm development by ESB Wind Development Ltd. It sits at the northeast corner of a wider settlement enclosure and forms part of a loose cluster of related features in the area, including nearby hut sites. Internally the building measures 5.4 metres by 2.6 metres, compact enough to suggest a single-roomed cabin-like dwelling rather than a field boundary or purely agricultural enclosure. An entrance in the northwest corner is marked on one side by an orthostat, a single upright stone used to define a doorway, and outside this entrance to the southwest are the low remains of a smaller pen or porch-like annexe. The structure's relationship to the surrounding settlement enclosure, and its limited visibility from some of the neighbouring hut sites but not others, hints at a landscape that was once organised with some care, even if the people who organised it left no written record of themselves.