At Fourcuil in County Cork, what was once a ringfort, the circular enclosed farmstead that formed the basic unit of early medieval Irish settlement, was destroyed in 1987. In the course of that destruction, local observers noted the brief appearance of a souterrain beneath it, described as "paved". A souterrain is an underground stone-lined passage or chamber, typically associated with ringforts and thought to have served for storage, refuge, or both. Once the work was done, it vanished along with everything else. Today there is no visible surface trace of either the fort or the passage beneath it.

The detail that lingers is the paving. Most souterrains are described in terms of their corbelled roofing or drystone walling; a paved floor suggests a degree of deliberate construction that points to a site of some local significance, though the record is too thin to say more than that. What is known is that the ringfort existed long enough to be recorded, that something lay beneath it, and that both were gone within the same year.