It is, in fact, something stranger: a sweathouse, a form of communal bathhouse once found across Ulster and Connacht and used as a folk remedy for ailments ranging from rheumatism to fever. The principle was simple enough. A fire was lit inside the chamber, the ashes raked out once the stones were sufficiently hot, and patients crawled in through the low entrance to sweat it out, emerging to plunge into the cold stream nearby. That stream at Corrakeeldrum was not incidental; it was part of the treatment.

The structure was recorded by Richardson in 1939 and described as a circular, beehive-shaped construction built in drystone technique, meaning the stones are laid without mortar, relying on careful placement for stability. The interior diameter is approximately 1.8 metres, the height the same, making it a tight but functional space. Three narrow slabs form the roof internally, while the entrance is covered by two lintels. A chimney on the western side of the back wall would have allowed smoke to escape during the heating phase. The whole thing is compact and purposeful, built to do a specific job. It was already old enough to be marked on the Ordnance Survey maps of both 1836 and 1876, though sweathouses as a living tradition had largely fallen out of use by the late nineteenth century, displaced by changing attitudes to medicine and the slow spread of formal healthcare into rural Ireland.