A souterrain, as these structures are known, is a man-made underground chamber or series of tunnels, typically built from dry stone and roofed with large lintels, and they appear across Ireland in their hundreds, most of them associated with early medieval settlement. They were used variously for storage, refuge, or as connected annexes to ringforts and farmsteads. The one at Lissataggle is recorded as a monument, which is enough to confirm its existence, even if the details of its construction and condition remain largely undocumented in publicly available sources.

Souterrains of this kind generally date from the early medieval period, roughly the sixth to the twelfth century, though some may be earlier. Kerry has a notable concentration of them, often found in association with ringforts, the circular enclosed farmsteads that were the dominant settlement type of the period. The place name Lissataggle is itself suggestive: "lios" is an Irish word for a ringfort or enclosed area, hinting that the surrounding landscape may once have held exactly the kind of settled agricultural community that would have made use of such an underground feature. Whether the souterrain here survives intact, has collapsed, or is simply grassed over and unmarked on the ground is not currently known from available records.