Hut site, Aurora, Co. Wicklow
Co. Wicklow |
Settlement Sites
On the upland ground above the Glencree River in County Wicklow, a low bank of earth and stone traces out a roughly D-shaped enclosure that has been quietly present on Ordnance Survey maps since their earliest editions.
What the old maps recorded as an irregular field turns out, on closer inspection, to be something considerably older and more deliberate: a prehistoric or early medieval enclosure containing two circular hut sites set into its south-western quadrant.
The enclosure is defined by a grass-covered bank, the kind that centuries of weathering reduce to little more than a gentle ripple in the ground, easily mistaken for a natural feature or a forgotten field boundary. Drystone walls, built without mortar in the traditional manner, radiate outward from the south-south-west and south, suggesting that the site was once part of a managed agricultural or pastoral landscape. The two circular hut sites within the enclosure represent the remains of rounded structures typical of early settlement in Ireland, where low stone walls would have supported a thatched or turf roof. The site sits approximately forty metres west of the Glencree River, a position that would have offered both a water source and a degree of shelter in an otherwise exposed upland setting.