A midden, the accumulated refuse of earlier inhabitants, typically shells, animal bones, and other organic debris left by people eating and living in one place over long periods, was recorded at this spot around 1970. More intriguingly, someone had at some earlier point dug a souterrain directly into it. A souterrain is an underground stone-lined passage or chamber, constructed during the early medieval period in Ireland, most often associated with settlement sites and thought to have served for storage, refuge, or both. To cut one into a pre-existing midden suggests the people who built it either did not know what lay beneath or simply did not mind disturbing it.

When the site was inspected in 2004, the midden material itself had vanished from view entirely, whether through erosion, disturbance, or simply the passage of time. What remained visible were the roofstones of the souterrain, lying exposed at the surface. That combination, a midden recorded and then lost, a souterrain whose fabric endures even as its context disappears, points to how quickly archaeological evidence can shift from present to absent within a few decades.