Booley hut, Bunnamohaun, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Farm Buildings

Booley hut, Bunnamohaun, Co. Mayo

On the lower south-western slopes of Knockmore, in a small natural basin locally known as Prawke, eight stone hut foundations sit in a quiet cluster around a stream, arranged, curiously, in pairs.

They are booley huts, the remnants of a seasonal farming practice called booleying, in which families and their livestock, typically cattle, moved to upland summer pastures and lived there temporarily in rough shelters before returning to the lowlands in autumn. The practice was once widespread across Ireland, but physical traces of it are relatively rare, which makes a concentration of eight huts in one small fold of ground genuinely unusual.

This particular hut sits at the north-western end of a narrow terrace on the north-eastern slopes of the basin, with a companion hut lying just 4.5 metres away along the terrace to the south-east, and a house foundation some 13 metres further downslope to the east. The structure itself is almost square in plan, measuring roughly 2.9 metres north-east to south-west and 2.3 metres north-west to south-east, and its walls survive only as a low grassy bank, no more than 30 centimetres high, concealing a stony core beneath. Large angular stones break through the turf along the north-eastern and north-western sides, while the south-western wall has largely dissolved into the scarped edge of the terrace. A handful of small stones at the base of that south-western side may be the last remnant of an external facing. The interior is scattered with large stones, partly grassed over, and no clear entrance survives, though a narrow gap at the southern corner has been noted, possibly of more recent origin. Attached to the hut at its north-western end is a small D-shaped annexe, a more lightly built structure indicated by little more than a faint grassy ridge and a single protruding stone at the south-western corner, with a gap of about 60 centimetres that likely served as its entrance.

The pairing of the huts across the Prawke cluster is the detail that invites the most curiosity. Whether this reflects families working together, a division of uses between sleeping and sheltering animals, or simply the logic of building beside an existing structure rather than in isolation, local tradition is silent on. What remains is the outline of a summer world, reduced to low banks and protruding stones on a quiet hillside.

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Pete F
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