The one at Madame in County Cork came to light not through deliberate excavation but through accident, when a collapse in 1984 broke open what turned out to be a rock-cut chamber little more than a metre wide and just sixty centimetres high. It is the kind of discovery that tends to happen quietly, without fanfare, and whose significance only becomes apparent once someone is able to look closely at the ground that gave way.

What the collapse revealed was a single chamber cut into the natural terrain, its roof partially set within boulder clay. Dry-stone walling was recorded along the east wall, a construction technique common in such structures where the builders worked with whatever material lay to hand. Accumulated spoil blocked investigation of the northern end of the chamber, which was frustrating, because a second chamber was reported to extend in that direction. That second space has since been destroyed, leaving only the partial evidence of the first. The site belongs to a tradition of souterrain-building found across early medieval Ireland, though each example tends to reflect the specific conditions of its landscape and the particular choices of those who dug it.