What makes this particular example quietly interesting is precisely that there is nothing left to see. No hollow in the ground, no collapsed lintel, no slight depression that might prompt a curious walker to pause. The place exists now almost entirely as a written note.

The record comes from Neary, writing in 1914, who observed that a souterrain led into a rath from the northern side. A rath, also called a ringfort, is a roughly circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank and ditch, the most common type of settlement in early medieval Ireland, used from roughly the fifth to the twelfth century. The souterrain at Cloonagh was associated with a large example of one such enclosure. Neary's description, terse as it is, places the entrance on the northern approach, which is a detail specific enough to suggest he either visited the site or had a reliable local account to draw from. Whether the souterrain was already partially collapsed by 1914, or still substantially intact, is not recorded. At some point after that, whatever remained above or near the surface disappeared entirely.