Souterrain, Baile Na Habha, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Settlement Sites

Souterrain, Baile Na Habha, Co. Kerry

On the western bank of the Ballynahow river in County Kerry, there is believed to be an underground stone-built passage that nobody can currently find.

A souterrain, the term used for the dry-stone tunnels and chambers constructed in early medieval Ireland, often for storage or refuge, was reportedly uncovered at this location at some point in the past. It does not appear on Ordnance Survey maps, and the information survives only through local testimony, which gives the whole thing a faintly spectral quality: an underground structure known mainly through the memory of its discovery.

What happened next is a brief story of concealment. The souterrain was filled in after it was found, and by the time any formal attention turned to the site, dense vegetation had closed over it, making surface examination impossible. No dimensions, no internal features, no finds are recorded. The place exists in the archaeological record largely as an absence, a thing that was there and then was not, swallowed first by infill and then by undergrowth on the Iveragh Peninsula.

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Pete F
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