Its opening is still visible at ground level, and if you peer down into it you can make out the chamber below, its walls built from dry stone and its roof formed from flat lintels laid horizontally across the gap. The structure is a souterrain, an underground passage or chamber of the kind constructed throughout early medieval Ireland, most often for storage, refuge, or both. This one sits within a cashel, a circular stone-walled enclosure that once served as a fortified farmstead, and the combination of the two features speaks to a period when the landscape of West Cork was organised around defended family settlements.

McCarthy noted the site in 1977, and the description has changed little since. The souterrain is inaccessible, which is not unusual for structures of this kind. Dry stone construction without mortar is surprisingly durable, but centuries of soil movement and organic growth above ground can render the approaches unstable or entirely blocked. The linteled roof, where large flat stones are placed directly across the walls to form a ceiling, is a classic technique found in souterrains across Munster and beyond. That the chamber appears intact beneath the surface is itself notable; many such features collapse over time or are filled deliberately.