Cave — Ballyvelaghan

Within Parkmore ringfort (CL003-006002-), c. 8.6m NW of centre. The ringfort is hachured and named ‘Parkmore fort’ on the 1842 and 1915 eds. of the OS 6-inch maps and named ‘Lios Páirc Mhóir’ on Robinson’s map (1977). The souterrain is only indicated on the 1915 map, where it is named ‘Cave’. All that is visible now is an entrance or creep marked by a lintel (traceable Wth 0.95m; T 0.15m; depth of sod cover above lintel 0.1m) supported on either side by drystone walling, spanning an ope (Wth 0.5m) and a probable E–W passage or chamber visible above ground as a low grass-covered mound (L 4.5m E–W; Wth 1.7m; H 0.3m). In the mid-1800s the souterrain was accessible and Cooke (1851, 295–6) recorded it as having three chambers connected by creeps with vertical rising and descending creeps, as follows: ‘opening… about the centre of the fort. The first gallery… runs in a south-westerly direction from the entrance. It is twenty-six feet long, six feet high to the ceiling, and the same number of feet in breadth. The side walls are roughly formed of large stones, rudely, yet substantially put together; and the roof is made of immense flags. At the end of the first gallery is a passage… about five feet in length, but only three feet and a-half high, by two feet wide. The floor of this passage is on a level with that of the gallery, already mentioned. In order to pass through this confined communication, one is obliged to crawl on hands and knees. When, by this inconvenient kind of locomotion, you arrive at the end of the passage, you find it terminated by a wall built right across its breadth. The only way by which to advance farther is by ascending through a square hole… overhead, the breadth of the side of which is somewhat less than that of the passage, it being only one foot nine inches. On emerging through the opening… you find yourself in the little chamber, which is no more than seven feet long by five and a-half feet broad, and only four feet high. If you would hence proceed farther you must descend through the square opening …and creep from thence as before through another low and narrow passage, also five feet long by three and a-half feet high, and two feet wide. This last-mentioned passage brings you to another gallery… which runs at right angles to the gallery before described. It is fourteen feet long by nine and a-half feet wide, and six feet high. Opposite to this passage, …another passage… leads, as a kind of sally-port to the exterior of the inner rampart of the fort. The last-mentioned passage is five feet long by two feet wide, and four and a-half feet high. The flag, which was placed outside against this aperture, was four feet square. Thus, from whichever end of the souterrain its inhabitant might be pursued, he was enabled to make a fatal resistance. Flags which fitted into cells, stopped the holes… in the passages; and their upper surfaces being even with the floor of the little apartment, a stranger would have much delay and difficulty in discovering the apertures they covered’. Compiled by: Mary Tunney and Ros Ó Maoldúin Date of upload: 15 December 2020