Souterrain, Corrower, Co. Mayo

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Settlement Sites

Souterrain, Corrower, Co. Mayo

Beneath a rath in Corrower, County Mayo, there may be a souterrain that nobody has seen for a very long time.

The intriguing thing about this site is precisely that absence: no earthwork interrupts the grass, no hollow suggests a collapse, no masonry pokes through the soil. The only evidence that anything lies below is the memory of it, passed along in local tradition.

A souterrain is an underground stone-lined passage or chamber, typically built during the early medieval period and associated with nearby settlement enclosures. They were used variously for storage, refuge, or as escape routes, and they turn up with some regularity beneath and around the raths, or ringforts, that were once the farmsteads of early Irish families. The rath at Corrower is a recorded monument in its own right, and the local tradition of a souterrain connected to it is entirely plausible in that context. Whether the passage survives intact underground, has collapsed silently into itself, or was dismantled at some point in the past, remains unknown. The landscape above gives nothing away.

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Pete F
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