The souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber typically associated with early medieval monastic and settlement sites, was uncovered in 1967 not by archaeologists but by workmen digging foundation trenches for a new cemetery wall at Meelick. Two trenches, each roughly a metre deep, cut across the structure, exposing dry-stone walls and a roof of flat lintels. A small collection of objects, including bones and sea shells, was removed and sent to the National Museum of Ireland. Then the trenches were filled in again, and no one recorded exactly where the souterrain lay.

The find sits within a broader monastic landscape. To the east of The Bishop's Field, a graveyard encloses the remains of a church and a round tower, both part of an early ecclesiastical foundation at Meelick. Round towers, the slender stone structures built across Ireland from roughly the ninth century onward, served as bell towers and places of refuge for monastic communities. The souterrain is thought to have belonged to the same foundation, possibly used for storage or shelter, as such structures commonly were. That a sea shells ended up inside it is quietly intriguing given Meelick's inland position, suggesting either trade connections or ritual deposit, though the record does not say which.

What makes the site unusual is not simply its age or its associations but the particular quality of its obscurity. It was found, briefly examined, stripped of a few objects, and then buried again, all without anyone noting the coordinates. The round tower still stands, visible and recorded. The souterrain is somewhere nearby, under a field with a name, waiting for a spade to find it a second time.