Hut site, Drinaghan More, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Settlement Sites
Tucked into a corner of an ancient enclosure in Drinaghan More, County Sligo, a low curve of earth and stone preserves what may once have been someone's home.
The feature is semi-circular in plan, roughly 8.5 metres across, and sits pressed against an internal dividing bank in the south-east corner of the enclosure's larger western portion. Its defining banks are modest, barely half a metre high on the interior side and slightly less on the exterior, yet their arrangement is deliberate enough to suggest a structure rather than a natural formation.
The enclosure itself is divided by a low north-to-south bank that separates its interior into two unequal sections. The possible hut site occupies the south-east corner of the bigger, western section, borrowing the enclosure's own perimeter bank to form part of its eastern and southern edges, with a separate low bank completing the arc on the south-west and western sides. This kind of arrangement, where a dwelling or shelter makes use of an existing boundary as one of its walls, is fairly common in early medieval Irish settlement, where enclosed farmsteads often contained ancillary structures alongside a main dwelling. Whether this particular feature represents a dwelling, a shelter for animals, or some other domestic purpose is not certain, and the careful hedging in its description reflects that genuine ambiguity. What survives is a faint but legible outline, just substantial enough to read as architecture.