Man-made underground passage in Cush — Report the wrong picture

What is recorded here

Under Ringfort 2 in County Limerick, a narrow passage runs fourteen feet from near the centre toward the southeast. Ó Ríordáin uncovered it in the mid-1930s, finding a sloped clay entrance at one end and broken stones at the other that may have formed a ventilation shaft. The passage is barely wide enough for a person to crawl through, yet its deliberate shape suggests it served the ringfort rather than chance. What happened inside remains unknown, but the cut clay and surviving stones prove someone dug beneath an ordinary Irish field and believed the dark would be useful.

Man-made underground passage in SE quadrant of ringfort (LI048-034026-) excavated by Ó Ríordáin (1940, 128-132) between 1934-5. Excavation of the interior of ‘Ringfort 2’ uncovered the remains of a Man-made underground passage, described by Ó Ríordáin (1940, 96) as follows; ‘Running from near the centre in a direction slightly south of east was a Man-made underground passage which had a length of a little over 14 feet [4.26m] and an average breadth of somewhat less than 2 feet [0.6m]. The clay at the western end had been cut away so as to slope from the ground surface to the floor of the Man-made underground passage thus forming an approach to the latter. The stones shown at the north-eastern corner of this Man-made underground passage were evidently the remains of a ventilation shaft such as we shall see much better represented in connection with Man-made underground passages in some of the other Ring-Forts.’ See attached plans and photos taken from Ó Ríordáin and Google Earth orthoimages. Compiled by: Fiona Rooney Date of upload: 2 September 2021

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