That act of practical tidying may have concealed something considerably older. The blocked opening is thought to indicate the presence of a souterrain beneath the surface, one of the stone-lined underground passages or chambers built in early medieval Ireland, typically for storage, refuge, or ventilation of an adjoining settlement. The decision to fill it in rather than investigate it is not unusual; across rural Ireland, such features have long been regarded as hazards or curiosities rather than archaeology.

The site falls within the Iveragh Peninsula, the large south-western finger of Kerry that reaches into the Atlantic and contains one of the densest concentrations of early medieval remains in the country. The possibility of a souterrain here was recorded by archaeologists A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan in their 1996 survey of the peninsula, published by Cork University Press, where it appears as entry number 580. The language of that original record is cautious, and deliberately so. The blocked hole is suggestive rather than conclusive; without excavation or ground survey, the presence of an actual souterrain remains unconfirmed. What can be said is that somebody, living within recent generations, knew the hole was there and chose to seal it.