The ground gives nothing away; no hollow, no depression, no stones arranged in a tell-tale line. The site is recorded not because anything has been excavated or confirmed, but because a local tradition says something is there, passed down through generations of people who presumably had reason to believe it.

Souterrains are underground stone-lined passages or chambers, built during the early medieval period in Ireland, typically between the seventh and twelfth centuries. They are found associated with ringforts and early settlement sites, and their precise function has been debated for a long time, with theories ranging from food storage and refuge to simple shelter from the cold. What makes the Greenanes site quietly interesting is that it exists entirely as a tradition rather than as a confirmed physical structure. The steep north-west-facing slope would have offered a certain kind of shelter and concealment to any settlement using it, which is exactly the sort of topography where early medieval activity tends to cluster in the Irish landscape. But that is as far as the evidence goes. No excavation has exposed the structure, and no surface trace has ever been recorded.