A souterrain is an underground stone-lined passage or chamber, typically built during the early medieval period and associated with nearby settlements, used variously for storage, refuge, or both. This one sits inside a ringfort that has itself been levelled, leaving no visible surface trace of either structure. The ground above gives nothing away.

Ringforts, the circular enclosed settlements that dot the Irish landscape in their thousands, were the farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, and souterrains were often built within their banks as ancillary features. When a ringfort is levelled, usually through centuries of agricultural clearance, the earthen banks and ditches that once defined it are spread and ploughed away. The souterrain, being underground, can survive this process intact, even as every above-ground sign of the settlement it belonged to disappears. At Cloghboola More, that appears to be exactly what has happened. The ringfort is recorded, its location known, but the landscape shows no indication that anything ever stood or was dug there.