Known locally as Clochán Poll Dick, it belongs to a class of early dry-stone building called a clochan, a beehive-shaped hut traditionally associated with early Christian monasticism and hermit life in the west of Ireland. This particular example is subcircular in plan, measuring 3.4 metres on its northwest-southeast axis and 3.2 metres northeast-southwest, and its walls are built from large limestone blocks set on edge rather than laid flat. The lower course of corbels, the inward-stepping stones that would once have drawn the walls together to form the roof, is still visible, giving a sense of the original ambition of the structure even in its ruined state.

A doorway on the southeast side opens into what appears to be a later annexe, suggesting the building was modified or extended at some point after its initial construction. The interior is now choked with collapsed stonework, which makes close examination difficult but does nothing to reduce the strangeness of the place. Tim Robinson, who documented the Aran Islands in meticulous detail, recorded the structure in 1980, and it later appeared in the Archaeological Inventory of County Galway compiled by Paul Gosling. The local name, Poll Dick, attaches a specific human identity to the site that the formal record does not explain, which is itself a small puzzle worth sitting with. The structure is protected as a national monument under Irish law, but out here on the middle island of the Arans, on open karst pavement close to the Atlantic edge, protection feels like a bureaucratic abstraction against the elemental fact of wind and slow collapse.