Hut site, Downs, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Settlement Sites
On the summit of a high ridge in County Westmeath, beneath an unbroken cover of grass, lie the footings of a small rectangular house that has not been a home for a very long time.
What makes the spot quietly arresting is not the structure itself but its setting: the walls sit at the centre of a bivallate ringfort, a type of early medieval enclosure defined by two concentric earthen banks and ditches. Ringforts of this kind were typically the farmsteads of prosperous families in early medieval Ireland, the double circuit of banks suggesting a degree of status or, in some interpretations, a need for extra security. Finding a domestic structure still legible within that enclosure, its entrance gap facing east, its floor plan more or less intact beneath the turf, is the kind of thing that tends to stop you in your tracks.
The house footings measure roughly four metres north to south and five metres east to west, with a two-metre-wide entrance at the eastern end. Two further rectangular structures adjoin it, one to the north and one to the south, suggesting a small cluster of rooms or outbuildings rather than a single isolated dwelling. A second possible hut site survives along the inside of the enclosing bank in the north-north-east quadrant of the ringfort. Taken together, the remains suggest that whoever occupied this ridge was using the interior of the ringfort in a considered way, arranging domestic space against and around the central structure. The ridge position would have made practical sense: commanding views in all directions meant that little could approach unnoticed across the surrounding grassland.