What is recorded here

Under the northern soil of a Limerick ringfort, a straight stone chamber stretched twenty-three feet before bending into a timber approach, forcing whoever built it to cut the ground away for easy entry. Ó Ríordáin uncovered this angular hallway during the 1934-5 dig, revealing how human hands shaped darkness into a usable room. The passage has vanished from modern satellite views, leaving only its geometry and the breath of the people who first walked it.

Man-made underground passage in N quadrant of bivallate ringfort (LI048-034037-) excavated by Ó Ríordáin (1940, 128-132) between 1934-5. A second Man-made underground passage (LI048-034032-) was uncovered in the S quadrant of the ringfort. Excavations in N quadrant of ringfort interior uncovered the remains of a Man-made underground passage (L. 7m; Wth 1.2m), described by Ó Ríordáin (1940, 129) as; 'The northern Man-made underground passage consisted in the main of a straight parallel-sided stone-built structure, 23 feet in length and nearly 4 feet in breadth, but having had attached to it a timber-built approach of which the four post-holes were found. These post-holes were so arranged as to show that the timber structure was almost at right-angles to the main stone-built part of the Man-made underground passage. The ground had been cut down at the southern side so as to allow easy access to the end of this timber approach’. No surface remains visible on Digital Globe orthoimage taken between 2011-13 or on Google Earth orthoimages. See attached plans from Ó Ríordáin and Google Earth orthoimages. Compiled by: Fiona Rooney Date of upload: 25 August 2021

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