A souterrain, to use the technical term, is a stone-lined underground tunnel or chamber, typically built during the early medieval period in Ireland as a place of refuge or cold storage within a defended settlement. This one sits inside a ringfort, the circular earthwork enclosure that was the standard unit of rural habitation from roughly the fifth to the twelfth century, and its shape alone sets it apart: two arms extending out from an attached house site, one running east to west at roughly 8.3 metres, the other turning north to south at around 8 metres, with a constriction partway along suggesting the passage narrowed deliberately, perhaps as a defensive feature. There may also have been two beehive chambers, small domed underground spaces that would have been sealed off from the main passage.

The ringfort in which the souterrain sits occupies a slight rise in the landscape, with open views to the west and north and more enclosed ground to the east and south, a siting that would have offered a degree of natural advantage to whoever lived here. At the centre of the enclosure, a low mound marks the footprint of a sub-circular house, and it is from the western side of this structure that the L-shaped depression extends. A second, smaller house or hut site survives in the southern sector of the same ringfort, suggesting the enclosure held more than a single dwelling at some point in its occupation. By 2011, when aerial photographs were taken, the whole monument had been absorbed into woodland, which has both protected and obscured it.