It measures just 1.35 metres on each side and stands barely 1.1 metres high, yet it represents a form of therapeutic practice that was once quietly common across rural Ireland: the sweathouse, a kind of indigenous sauna where people would heat the interior with burning turf, clear the embers, and then crowd inside to sweat out ailments ranging from rheumatism to fever.

The structure itself is carefully made. Its walls of dry-laid stone, fitted without mortar at roughly 0.55 metres thick, support a corbelled roof, a technique in which successive courses of stone are laid with each slightly overlapping the last until they meet at the top, requiring no keystone or cement to hold the whole together. The roof is slightly domed and covered with earthen and turf sods, which would have helped retain heat. A single stone slab remains on the floor. The entrance, positioned at the south-east and lined with a horizontal lintel stone, is just 0.4 metres wide and 0.8 metres high, meaning anyone entering would have had to crouch or crawl, which also served to keep warmth inside. Cut into the hillslope at the north-west, to a depth of around 0.8 metres, is a further feature identified as a possible second sweathouse, though its condition is less certain.

The site sits in rough stony pasture, the kind of ground that discourages casual grazing and development alike, which may partly explain why the structure has survived at all. The corrie setting, naturally sheltered from prevailing winds, would have made it a practical choice of location for a building whose entire purpose depended on retaining heat.