Souterrain, Meelick, Co. Mayo

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Settlement Sites

Souterrain, Meelick, Co. Mayo

What looks like an unassuming depression in a field at Meelick, County Mayo, is almost certainly the exposed remains of a souterrain, a type of underground stone-built passage or chamber constructed during the early medieval period, most often in association with a rath, the circular enclosure sometimes called a ringfort that served as a farmstead or dwelling place.

Souterrains were used variously for storage, refuge, or ventilation, and the fact that this one sits within a rath connects it to that wider domestic pattern across early medieval Ireland.

The visible remains take the form of a sub-rectangular pit, roughly seven metres along its northeast to southwest axis and just over four metres across. The sides are faced with stones, and the depression is shallow at its northwestern end but drops to about 1.1 metres in depth at the southeastern end. A considerable amount of loose stone covers the base, which is consistent with a collapse. Local knowledge holds that part of the souterrain fell in and was deliberately blocked up during the 1960s, which explains the open, ruinous condition of what survives. Before that intervention, the underground structure would presumably have been more intact, if not necessarily accessible.

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