Souterrain, Keerglen, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Settlement Sites
At Keerglen in County Mayo, a shallow, rubble-filled depression in the floor of an old house hints at something that once lay beneath.
The depression is irregular in shape, and its significance is easy to miss entirely, but it may mark the collapsed remains of a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber built during the early medieval period, most commonly associated with settlement sites and used for storage or concealment.
The house in question is subrectangular in plan and sits within the south-west quadrant of a rath, a type of circular or roughly circular earthwork enclosure that served as a farmstead during the early medieval centuries in Ireland. Raths are among the most common archaeological monument types in the Irish landscape, and it was not unusual for the households within them to include souterrains, though their exact functions remain a matter of some discussion among archaeologists. Here, the evidence is tentative. No intact passage has been confirmed, and what remains above ground is little more than a sunken irregularity in the earth, its interior choked with rubble. The relationship between the house and the enclosing rath places this modest feature within a recognisable pattern of early Irish rural settlement, even if the souterrain itself, if that is indeed what lies beneath, has long since fallen in on itself.