Those flat slabs once roofed an underground passage, a souterrain, and their presence on the surface tells you something has shifted or collapsed over the centuries. Souterrains are stone-lined tunnels, typically associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland, and were used variously for storage, refuge, or ventilation of adjoining structures. Here on a low rise in the rough upland pasture of Derryleagh, tucked between two tributaries of the Ardsheelhane river and south of River Hill, the combination of a ruined circular dwelling and its accompanying hidden passage is modest in scale but quietly suggestive of a life once organised around this particular patch of ground.

The hut foundations are subcircular in plan, measuring roughly 6.8 metres by 6.4 metres, though they survive to a height of only about 0.4 metres, with walls around 0.8 metres thick. They are poorly preserved enough that the outline requires some imagination to read. The souterrain, some four metres to the west, is now inaccessible, but the fallen lintels on the surface reveal its shape: an L-shaped passage that runs west for approximately 2.6 metres before turning south for a further four metres. The lintels themselves average around 1.2 metres in length. The survey of the Iveragh Peninsula compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan, published by Cork University Press in 1996, recorded the site as number 1256 in their catalogue of South Kerry's archaeology, placing it within a much broader picture of early habitation across this part of Munster.