Stone flags, turned up by local activity, are thought to have once formed the roof of a subterranean chamber, a souterrain, the kind of underground passage or cell that early medieval Irish communities built beneath or beside their enclosed settlements. Whether used for storage, refuge, or both is rarely easy to determine, and at Dromdrasdil the picture is particularly incomplete.

Souterrains are found throughout Ireland, most often in association with ringforts, the circular earthen or stone-walled enclosures that served as farmsteads from roughly the early medieval period onward. The ringfort here, recorded separately, is the context that makes the scattered flags significant. Without those flags, there would be little surface evidence of anything below. What local people noticed and passed on is, in this case, the whole of the surviving record, a handful of displaced stones suggesting a chamber that may have been disturbed or partially collapsed long before anyone thought to document it formally.