Souterrain, Carranduff, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Settlement Sites
In a low-lying coastal field in Carranduff, County Sligo, there is a roughly circular hollow in the ground, about eight metres across and less than half a metre deep.
To a passing eye it might read as nothing more than a natural dip in the pasture. Local tradition, however, holds that it marks a blocked-up entrance to a souterrain, an artificially constructed underground passage or chamber, typically built during the early medieval period and used for storage, refuge, or both.
The depression sits at the northern end of a linear mound, and the field containing both features has long been known locally as the "fort field", a name that suggests the community has retained some folk memory of the site's significance even as the physical evidence has become increasingly subtle. The association between souterrains and ringforts or earthworks is well established in Irish archaeology; they were frequently built in conjunction with above-ground enclosures, their hidden chambers accessible only from within the protected interior. Here, the mound itself is a separate recorded feature, and the souterrain appears to be related to it, tucked into its northern edge where the ground now shows only that shallow, circular scar where an entrance once opened downward.