A souterrain, as these dry-stone tunnels are known, is a type of underground chamber or passage typically associated with early medieval ringforts, thought to have served for storage, refuge, or both. This one sits within the footprint of a ringfort that has since been levelled, leaving no visible trace above ground. The opening into the void was apparently large enough, at some point, that a man with a mowing machine stumbled into it, and on a separate occasion, so did a horse.

The detail comes from a 1937 reference, which records the hole as having since been filled up. Local knowledge holds that the stone-lined passage was explored at some point in the past, though no formal account of that exploration appears to survive. What remains is a site that has effectively vanished twice over: the ringfort ploughed away, and the souterrain sealed beneath it. Directly to the east lies a second levelled ringfort, suggesting this corner of north Cork was once a more densely settled early medieval landscape than the current fields would suggest.

There is nothing to see at the surface today. No earthwork survives, no marker indicates where the passage runs, and the filled-in hole that once claimed a horse has long since been absorbed back into the ground. The interest of the place is precisely that absence, a reminder that the archaeological record is full of sites known only through accident, local memory, and the occasional unfortunate animal.