Beneath the bank of a rath in Scartlea, County Waterford, there is a small stone chamber just about large enough to crouch in, its roof sealed with flat lintels and its floor plan an oval roughly the size of a large dining table. This is a souterrain, an underground passage or chamber built in early medieval Ireland, typically associated with a ringfort and used variously for storage, refuge, or both. What makes this particular example quietly compelling is not its size but its geometry: two low crawl-ways, known as creeps, lead off in opposite directions, and neither one gives up its secret easily.

The chamber itself measures approximately 2.9 metres east to west and 1.85 metres north to south, with a maximum surviving height of around one metre, meaning entry would have required not just courage but a willingness to go in on hands and knees. The eastern creep can be seen for about 0.6 metres before it appears to stop, though whether it genuinely terminates or simply bends out of sight is unresolved. The western creep is more forthcoming in one sense: it connects to a second oval chamber. That chamber, however, is inaccessible, its contents and condition unknown. The souterrain sits within the bank of a rath, the circular earthwork enclosure that once defined a farmstead, and the two features almost certainly functioned together, the underground space serving the household above.