At Davidstown in Co. Westmeath, what began as routine digging in the north-western portion of a ringfort revealed a souterrain, one of the underground stone-lined passages or chambers built in early medieval Ireland, most likely for storage or as places of refuge. The find was accidental, and it remains a quiet footnote in the county's archaeology.

The first chamber uncovered is rectangular, running roughly east to west, measuring just over four metres long, 1.3 metres wide, and 1.7 metres high, large enough to crouch in but not to stand comfortably. Its walls are dry-stone construction, meaning no mortar was used, and they taper inwards as they rise before meeting a covering of large flat flags. At the western end of the south wall, a narrow squeeze-hole, barely 47 centimetres square and 75 centimetres deep, connects to a second chamber oriented at right-angles to the first. That second chamber is smaller, 2.75 metres long and just over a metre wide, with a ceiling height of 1.45 metres. At its southern end, what appears to be an exit passage was identified, though it had been blocked by collapsed material that had tumbled into the chamber itself, leaving any further extent of the structure unknown. The souterrain sits within a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead typically dating to the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries, and the two features together suggest a settlement of some significance on this otherwise unremarkable patch of Westmeath ground.