House - medieval, Inis Gé Thuaidh, Co. Mayo

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House

House – medieval, Inis Gé Thuaidh, Co. Mayo

On the small island of Inis Gé Thuaidh off the coast of County Mayo, a medieval house is slowly being reclaimed by a sandy hillside.

It has not been excavated or conserved in any conventional sense; instead, it is emerging, stone by stone, as coastal erosion eats into the lower southern slope of a large mound known as Bailey Mór. What survives is fragmentary but legible, and quietly arresting in its particularity.

Only the southern portion of the structure can now be traced, but that portion includes something rather specific: a narrow entrance passage, roughly two metres long and one metre wide, defined on either side by rows of thin upright slabs laid contiguously and overlapping, like a spine of flat stones. An arc of five further upright slabs curves away to the north-east, likely representing part of the house's rounded outer wall, before petering out in a scatter of loose stones where the interior has not yet been exposed. One detail stands out among the rest: a single upright slab at the southern end of the passage's eastern wall has a hole bored through its centre. Whether this was a pivot stone for a door, a tie-point for an animal, or something else entirely, the notes do not say, and the stone itself offers no easy answer. Seashells are also eroding out of the slope just to the south-east of the structure, suggesting the people who lived here were eating seafood, or perhaps using shell in construction or as midden material, in the way that island communities throughout the medieval period routinely did.

The site sits on the lower slope of Bailey Mór, which drops away steeply to the south of the house, meaning the structure was positioned on something of a natural terrace. It is a National Monument in state ownership, designated no. 379, and what remains visible is determined largely by the pace and direction of erosion rather than by any deliberate programme of uncovering.

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