The depressions and holes that remain in the ground are all that is visible of a souterrain, the kind of stone-lined underground tunnel or chamber that early medieval communities in Ireland built beneath or beside their raths, the circular earthen enclosures more commonly known as ringforts. Souterrains were used variously for storage, refuge, or concealment, and this one at Gortacurraun has long since collapsed, leaving only the soft irregular hollows that hint at the voids below.

What makes the site quietly compelling is a coin. A brass shilling of James II, the last Catholic monarch of England, Scotland, and Ireland, was found in a souterrain in a rath somewhere in this townland, a discovery recorded by O'Sullivan in 1931. James II reigned from 1685 until his deposition in 1688, and his brass coinage circulated in Ireland during the turbulent years that followed, particularly during the Jacobite campaigns of the early 1690s. The coin connects this unremarkable patch of ground to a very specific and fractious moment in Irish history. The difficulty is that Gortacurraun contains not one but two ringforts with souterrains, and no one has been able to establish with certainty which of them yielded the shilling. The ambiguity is part of the record, honestly acknowledged rather than papered over.