What it actually describes is a souterrain, an underground stone-built passage or chamber constructed in early medieval Ireland, most often associated with settlement sites and thought to have served for storage, refuge, or both. The word "cave" on that second-edition OS map is something of a misnomer, or at least an approximation, the kind of label a nineteenth-century surveyor might apply to an opening in the ground without much ceremony.

This particular souterrain at Meallis is stone-built and comprises three separate chambers, which makes it a reasonably substantial example of its type. It lies on the eastern side of the site it belongs to, and is described as closed in, meaning it is no longer open or accessible in the way it once was. The three-chamber arrangement is notable; many souterrains consist of a single passage or chamber, so a tripartite layout suggests some deliberate complexity in its original design. The site was documented by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan in their 1996 archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula, published by Cork University Press, which remains a foundational reference for the archaeology of South Kerry.