Souterrain, Carrowliam Beg, Co. Mayo

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Settlement Sites

Souterrain, Carrowliam Beg, Co. Mayo

Beneath a field in Carrowliam Beg, in County Mayo, there is said to be a stone-lined underground passage that has not been properly seen since someone accidentally turned up its flagstone roof while setting potatoes.

That is more or less the entirety of what is known, and there is a particular kind of historical intrigue in a site that survives almost entirely as local memory.

The souterrain, which is a man-made underground chamber or tunnel typically associated with early medieval ringforts and used variously for storage, refuge, or concealment, is believed to lie in the south-western quadrant of a rath. A rath is a circular earthwork enclosure, the remains of a farmstead usually dating to the early medieval period, roughly between the sixth and twelfth centuries. The accidental discovery during potato digging is the only recorded physical encounter with the structure, and it left no visible trace at ground level. No excavation appears to have followed, and the souterrain has since returned, effectively, to rumour.

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