It belongs to a category of early medieval structure known as a souterrain, an underground passage or chamber typically built from stone and used for storage, refuge, or both, and often found in association with ringforts, the circular enclosed farmsteads that dot the Irish countryside in their thousands. What makes this particular example unusual is not what is known about it, but how little: it was reported at some point by local people, noted as a "tunnel" discovered "some time ago", and left at that.

The souterrain sits within a ringfort recorded separately in the Cork archaeological inventory. Beyond its association with that enclosure, almost nothing can be said with confidence. No excavation appears to have taken place, no stonework has been exposed, and no surface trace of the underground feature was observed when it was formally noted. The information rests entirely on local memory or tradition, passed on at an unspecified point before the early 1990s when the west Cork volume of the Archaeological Inventory of County Cork was compiled. That a community retained knowledge of something buried and invisible is itself worth remarking on; souterrains were sometimes remembered in local lore long after their physical presence had become undetectable from above.