Hut site, Lecarrow, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Settlement Sites
Tucked against the inner wall of a rath in Lecarrow, County Sligo, is a small stone structure so modest in scale that it might easily be passed over as a natural feature of the earthwork.
Measuring roughly three and a half metres north to south and not quite three metres east to west, with a surviving height of about one metre, it sits at the west-south-west of the bank, built directly into its inner face rather than standing apart from it.
A rath, for those unfamiliar with the term, is a type of enclosed farmstead typical of early medieval Ireland, usually circular and defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches. They were the ordinary domestic spaces of their age, home to farmers and their families across several centuries. What makes this particular feature at Lecarrow quietly interesting is the way the small subcircular structure relates to the enclosure itself. Rather than being a freestanding building set within the interior, it uses the bank as one of its walls, a practical arrangement that would have provided both shelter and structural economy. Whether it served as sleeping quarters, a store, or some other purpose, the structure represents the kind of everyday detail that rarely survives visibly within a rath, even where the earthwork itself remains legible in the landscape.