Hut site, Inis Gé Thuaidh, Co. Mayo

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Inis Gé Thuaidh, Co. Mayo

Off the north Mayo coast, the island of Inis Gé Thuaidh, the northern of the two Inishkea islands, carries the remains of a hut site, a modest but telling trace of the people who once made their lives in one of the more remote stretches of the Irish Atlantic seaboard.

Hut sites of this kind are typically the low, stony footprints of simple structures, sometimes circular, sometimes oval, their walls reduced over centuries to little more than a grassed-over outline that only resolves itself into something recognisable when the light falls at an angle across the ground.

The Inishkea islands were inhabited for a remarkably long time. Archaeological work carried out on Inis Gé Thuaidh during the twentieth century uncovered evidence of early Christian activity, including a monastic or devotional presence, alongside signs of much older settlement. The islands were finally and permanently evacuated in 1931, following a tragedy in which ten young men from the community were drowned during a sudden storm while out fishing. That event effectively ended a way of life that had persisted, in various forms, across many centuries. The hut site sits within that long continuum, a physical remainder of the island's sustained, if isolated, human occupation.

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