House - indeterminate date, Carrownree, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
House
Inside a ringfort in County Sligo, set slightly east of centre within the larger enclosure at Carrownree, there is a low rectangular outline in the ground that was once, in some form, a dwelling.
What remains is modest almost to the point of invisibility: a roughly rectangular area measuring eight metres east to west and five metres north to south, with its eastern edge formed by the enclosure bank itself and its northern and southern sides marked by a low, narrow bank no more than sixty centimetres high. The western side has been removed entirely, and whatever entrance once existed is no longer readable in the landscape.
Ringforts, sometimes called raths, were enclosed farmsteads used across Ireland roughly from the early medieval period onward, and it was not uncommon for a smaller structure to be built within the interior of such an enclosure, sheltering against its bank or using it as a ready-made wall. That appears to be exactly what happened here. The eastern bank of the Carrownree enclosure does double duty, serving as the boundary of the fort and as one wall of this inner structure. The floor level inside the rectangular outline sits at roughly the same height as the surrounding enclosure interior, which suggests the building was set into the existing ground rather than raised above it. Beyond that, the record is quiet. No date can be confidently assigned, no builder named, no function confirmed beyond the broad category of house.