The whole structure lay effectively forgotten for decades, its existence reduced to a single sentence in a 1934 publication noting only that it had been filled in. Then, around 1977, a plough caught a large covering slab and shifted it, opening a gap that had been sealed for who knows how long. What came to light was a souterrain, an underground stone-built refuge or storage space associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland, typically constructed beneath or beside a ringfort.

The ringfort here has since been levelled, leaving no visible trace above ground, but the souterrain survived, more or less. According to a 1934 reference by Bowman, it was already known to have been backfilled at that point. The disturbance by ploughing in 1977 reopened it, but the chamber was backfilled again rather than properly investigated. It was not until 1993 that a more careful examination took place, revealing the full layout. Chamber 1 runs east to west, measuring roughly 3.2 metres long and 1.34 metres wide, with a height of about one metre; its side walls and western end are stone-built, while the eastern end is simply earth-cut, roofed with flat lintel stones. A creepway, barely half a metre high and wide, connects it at the western end to Chamber 2, which runs north to south, is slightly longer at 3.7 metres, and is narrower at one metre across. The walls of Chamber 2 are stone-built except at the northern end, and its southern end shows evidence of earlier backfilling as well as a more recent opening to the surface where roof slabs have been displaced.

The geometry of the two chambers, one east-west and one north-south, joined by that cramped connecting passage, is characteristic of a defensive or concealment function. The constricted creepway, measuring only 0.94 metres long, 0.54 metres wide, and 0.48 metres high, would have made movement between chambers slow and awkward, exactly the point if the space were used to shelter people or valuables during a raid. What makes this particular souterrain quietly telling is its layered history of concealment, rediscovery, and re-concealment, a cycle that mirrors, in miniature, the broader archaeological fate of the ringfort it once served.