Dunluce castle is one of the most dramatic and romantic ruins in Ireland, with cliffs isolating the crag on which it stands from the mainland on all sides. It must therefore have been an ideal site for a defensive position from the earliest times, but as its entire top surface was intensively cleared, flattened and built over during the 16th and 17th centuries that the only surviving object from earlier times is a souterrain, a subterranean tunnel used for hiding both goods and people at many Irish sites during the 9th and 10th centuries.