Souterrain, Clashadoo, Co. Cork

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Settlement Sites

Souterrain, Clashadoo, Co. Cork

There is a field on a west-facing slope outside Durrus, in County Cork, where an underground passage once opened into the light.

Today there is nothing to see; the souterrain has been filled in, and the pasture above it gives no indication that anything lies beneath. What makes the place quietly notable is precisely that absence, the fact that living memory recorded it open within recent generations, and now it is simply gone.

A souterrain is a man-made underground structure, typically a stone-lined passage or chamber, built during the early medieval period in Ireland. They were associated with settlement sites and are thought to have served as places of refuge, storage, or both. The one at Clashadoo, to the west of Durrus on the Sheep's Head peninsula, was apparently accessible as late as the 1950s, when local knowledge of it was still current. At some point after that it was filled in, whether for safety, agricultural convenience, or some other reason is not recorded. By the time formal archaeological notice was taken of the site, there were no visible remains left at the surface.

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Pete F
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