Sweathouses, known in Irish as tigh allais, were typically small, corbelled stone chambers, roughly the size of a large wardrobe, used for the treatment of rheumatism and other ailments. A fire would be lit inside, the embers raked out once the walls were thoroughly heated, and the bather would then squeeze through the low entrance and sit in the accumulated warmth, sometimes for an extended period, before plunging into a nearby stream.

The Murhaun structure appears on the Ordnance Survey twenty-five-inch map of 1907, marked plainly as "Sweat House (in Ruins)", positioned roughly fifteen metres south of a small northwestward-flowing stream, with a dwelling shown about a hundred and forty metres to the east-northeast. By that point it was already a relic, but it had been in living memory not long before. A local man, Joseph Rourke of Shaskinacurry, recalled seeing it in use, and the account collected for the Schools Manuscripts Collection noted that the last use had been approximately fifty-four years prior to his testimony. His description is specific: a round house, a cramped entrance hole, and three stone seats arranged inside. The structure as currently recorded is roughly three metres by three metres and appears roofless, sitting now at the northeastern edge of a forestry plantation. The site was brought to wider attention by Aidan Harte, Project Co-ordinator of the Leitrim Sweathouse Project, which has been working to document surviving examples across the county.