It appears by name on the 1838 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, marked plainly as "Cave", and then, as far as the visible landscape is concerned, it simply stops. No hollow in the ground, no rocky mouth, no depression in the turf. Whatever the cartographers recorded has left no surface trace that can be found today.

The 1838 OS six-inch maps were among the most systematic surveys of the Irish landscape ever undertaken, and the surveyors were generally careful about what they chose to name. The fact that something was labelled "Cave" at Caherhenryhoe suggests it was a feature of some local significance at the time, though whether that meant a natural limestone cavity, a souterrain (an artificial underground passage often associated with early medieval settlement), or something else entirely is now unclear. What the surrounding landscape does offer is context. A possible rath is associated with the cave site; a rath is a roughly circular earthen enclosure, typically dating to the early medieval period and used as a farmstead. Two further raths lie within a few hundred metres, one approximately 65 metres to the west-northwest, another around 225 metres to the west-southwest. That cluster of enclosures points to a stretch of ground that was, at some point, deliberately and repeatedly settled, which makes the presence of a cave or souterrain in the same area rather less surprising.