Hilliard at Ballydunlea, near Tralee, broke open a chamber that had sat undisturbed for centuries. Workers digging up an old stone fence running the length of a field struck what turned out to be a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber typically associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland, often used for storage or refuge. Inside, a man named Hitchcock found fragments of human bone. What he had stumbled into was likely a burial ground connected to the souterrain, a site that left almost no trace on the surface above it.

Hitchcock, writing in 1854 to 1855, was methodical and curious in equal measure. He noted that the field showed no visible sign of a fort, though a low mound nearby, overgrown with blackthorn and briars, may once have formed part of a defensive embankment. In the adjoining field, closer to the river, he described a more legible feature: a small stone enclosure he considered unusual, with a large rough stone set at an oblique angle near its centre. He had returned to it often, he wrote, sitting on the stone and speculating about whether it might once have served as an altar. It is the kind of detail that belongs to a particular Victorian sensibility, careful observation laced with romantic inference, but the physical description itself is precise enough to be taken seriously. A later field inspection report noted that the possible burial ground was levelled sometime after 1960, removing what little remained of the surface archaeology at the site.