What actually survives at Doory, on the Iveragh Peninsula in south Kerry, is a souterrain, an underground passage built from drystone walling, of the kind constructed throughout early medieval Ireland, most likely for storage or refuge. Only a fragment of it remains, and even that fragment is in poor shape, but the label 'Cave' on the OS sheet has given this modest ruin a quiet mythology it might not otherwise possess.

The surviving section of the passage is aligned roughly north to south and measures just 1.8 metres long and half a metre wide, enough to confirm the structure's form but not much more. The interior is largely choked with collapsed material, though one original lintel, the flat stone that would have capped the passage, remains in place at a depth of about 0.8 metres below the present ground surface. The site sits on a gently sloping north-facing hillside looking out over Portmagee Channel, the narrow strip of water that separates the mainland from Valentia Island. Around five metres to the south-west, a semicircular scatter of stone and rubble survives; it may be the remains of a structure once associated with the souterrain, perhaps a small enclosure or building, or it may simply be the accumulated debris of generations of field clearance. The notes are honest about the ambiguity, and that honesty is part of what makes the place interesting.

Souterrains of this kind are relatively common across Kerry and the wider Irish Atlantic seaboard, but most visitors to the Iveragh Peninsula are drawn towards the more legible monuments further west. This one, disturbed and quietly unresolved, rewards the kind of attention that does not require a complete answer.