Souterrain, Cathair Coinn, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
A routine piece of roadwork, the widening of a laneway at the base of the northern slopes of Croaghmarhin in October 1966, broke through the roof of a structure that had been sealed underground for an unknown length of time.
What it revealed was a souterrain, an underground stone-built chamber of the kind commonly constructed in early medieval Ireland, typically for storage or refuge. This one is now neither accessible nor visible from the surface, which makes it an oddly complete kind of disappearance: found, examined, and then effectively lost again.
The chamber was small and carefully made. Oval to sub-rectangular in plan, it measured 2.1 metres north to south and just over a metre at its widest point east to west, with a height of approximately one metre. The walls were of drystone construction, meaning the stones were laid without mortar, and the uppermost courses were slightly corbelled, angled inward to help support the roof. Three large lintels, each roughly ten to twelve centimetres thick, covered the whole. A rounded recess was set into the southern wall, about thirty-five centimetres wide and positioned sixty-five centimetres above the floor, its lower half left without stone lining. No original entrance was found; access during the 1966 inspection was gained simply by lifting one of the lintels. The chamber was cleared of all fill, but the only objects recovered were three horseshoes and two animal bones, considered by investigators to be recent introductions rather than original deposits. The souterrain was inspected shortly after its discovery by Rynne of the National Museum of Ireland, and the site was later documented in J. Cuppage's 1986 archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula.