Hut site, Fanygalvan, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Settlement Sites
Between 400 and 500 feet above sea level in County Clare, a roughly circular outline sits in the rough grazing of Fanygalvan, its enclosing wall long since swallowed by vegetation.
From aerial imagery captured between 2013 and 2018, the site reads clearly enough: a circular enclosure of around nine metres in diameter, with overgrown field walls trailing away to the south-south-east, west, and north-east. On the ground it would be easy to walk past without registering what you were seeing.
The hut sits within a multiperiod field system, meaning the landscape around it preserves evidence of agricultural use across several different eras, layers of human activity folded into the same hillside. The enclosure itself is the kind of simple circular structure that appears at various points in Irish prehistory and the early medieval period, typically formed by a low bank or wall enclosing a single dwelling or working space. What gives this particular site a quiet interest is its company: a second possible hut site lies roughly 28 metres to the west-south-west, suggesting this was not an isolated spot but part of something larger, a fragment of a settlement or seasonal grazing arrangement whose full shape is still being mapped against the surrounding field system.