It sits within what was once a ringfort, the circular earthwork enclosures that served as farmsteads across early medieval Ireland, though the fort here has been levelled, its banks and ditches long since ploughed or built away. What remains is largely invisible unless you know what you are looking at.

A souterrain is a stone-lined underground chamber or passage, typically constructed during the early medieval period and associated with nearby settlement sites such as ringforts. Their precise function is still debated, though storage and refuge are the most commonly cited uses. The one at Knockrour was recorded by P. J. Hartnett in 1939, who described it simply as a collapsed souterrain. That description has not substantially changed in the decades since. The area of collapse he noted remains visible at the surface, a hollow or disturbed patch in the ground that marks where the roof of the structure gave way, leaving a shallow scar in the landscape that the surrounding field activity has never quite erased.