The limestone slab that once marked its entrance was removed at some point in the past, and since then the ground above has kept its secret quietly. There is, as the record puts it with admirable plainness, no visible surface trace.

A souterrain is an underground stone-lined passage or chamber, typically constructed during the early medieval period and associated with ringforts, the circular enclosed farmsteads that once housed Irish families of middling status across the landscape. Their precise function is still debated; they may have served as cool storage for dairy produce, as refuges during raids, or both. At Meenvane, the souterrain sits within a ringfort that has its own separate record, and what is known of the underground chamber comes largely from a reference by Ryan in 1946. The removal of the covering slab, at an unspecified date, exposed the chamber and presumably allowed at least some investigation or inspection before the reference was set down. Whether it was subsequently filled, collapsed, or simply left open and forgotten is not recorded.