Souterrain, Ardagh, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Souterrain, Ardagh, Co. Kerry

There is nothing to see at this site in Ardagh, County Kerry, and that absence is precisely what makes it worth knowing about.

Beneath a field that now shows no surface trace, a souterrain once lay in several pieces, its underground chambers gradually erased from view not by archaeologists but by practical necessity. A souterrain is an underground stone-built passage or chamber, typically associated with early medieval ringforts, used variously for storage, refuge, or ventilation of nearby dwellings. Here, the chambers were filled in because they had been causing injury to animals moving across the land above them.

The site sits to the north-east of a rath, the circular earthen enclosure that would have been its companion structure in daily use. By the time it was visited in April 1987, two of the chambers had already been reduced to mounds of rubble, their presence detectable but their form gone. Then, in April 1986, a third chamber came to light. Built of drystone walling, it measured approximately 4.5 metres in diameter and 3 metres in depth, though the infill made precise measurement difficult. That chamber too was subsequently closed up. The field now offers extensive views in all directions, with no indication that anything lies beneath.

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