Not placed there for display or commemoration, but simply used as building material, they had been repurposed so thoroughly that their inscribed edges were hidden underground for centuries. The structure they helped hold up was a souterrain, a type of stone-lined underground passage or chamber commonly associated with early medieval ringforts, likely used for storage, refuge, or both.

The souterrain sits in the north-western quadrant of a ringfort at Knockshanawee, and it was excavated in 1910 by Messrs. Cremin and Murphy. Their findings were published the following year by Lee, who described a main chamber nine feet square, roofed with large flagstones resting on massive uprights. Cremin added more precise detail: the chamber stood seven feet high, with roofing flags nine feet in the clear and roughly eighteen inches wide, supported by pillars seven feet high, twelve inches wide, and nine inches thick. At the time of excavation, entrances to a south-eastern chamber and a north-eastern one could not be accessed. Five of the six ogham stones had been laid flat as lintels across the roof; the sixth had been set upright as a pillar. All six were eventually removed and are now held at University College Cork.

Above ground today, the souterrain announces itself only as an L-shaped depression roughly a metre deep, running about six metres in one direction before turning and continuing for three metres more. The stonework that once impressed Cremin and Murphy is no longer visible to a casual visitor, but the dip in the earth marks where that carefully built chamber still lies beneath, minus its most remarkable contents.