Cave, Carrowroe, Co. Galway

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Settlement Sites

Cave, Carrowroe, Co. Galway

At Carrowroe in County Galway, a shallow oval hollow in the ground is just about all that remains visible of what was once a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber typically built during the early medieval period for storage, refuge, or ventilation within a settlement.

It is not a dramatic ruin, nor a standing structure. It is, in essence, an absence.

The depression sits in the north-eastern quadrant of the interior of a rath, a type of circular earthen enclosure that served as a farmstead in early medieval Ireland and is one of the most common monument types in the Irish landscape. The hollow measures roughly four metres north to south and one metre east to west, with a depth of about half a metre. No stonework breaks the surface, meaning whatever structure once existed below has either collapsed inward or been obscured over centuries of use and weathering. A second, similar depression immediately to the south may be connected to the same souterrain, suggesting the underground feature could have been more extensive than the single hollow implies.

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