The hollows are not dramatic features; the larger measures four metres long and three metres wide, sunken just thirty centimetres below the surrounding surface, with a second hollow of similar dimensions lying roughly four metres to the northwest. What makes them quietly significant is what they imply beneath the soil: a collapsed or filled subterranean structure that once served the community living within the enclosure above.

Souterrains are found across Ireland in considerable numbers, almost always in association with ringforts, the circular earthen or stone enclosures that were the dominant settlement form of early medieval Ireland, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries. They were typically constructed from dry-stone walling or timber, roofed with lintels, and accessed through a narrow creep, a low connecting passage designed to slow an intruder. The one at Kilclare sits within the ringfort recorded separately in the Cork archaeological record, and its current form as a pair of surface depressions suggests the roof has long since given way, leaving only the ghost of the chambers as slight hollows in the ground.