House - indeterminate date, Carrick, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
House
Tucked against the inner bank of a ringfort in County Westmeath, a small house site raises a question that nobody has yet been able to answer: when, exactly, did someone decide to make their home here, and who were they?
The structure is subrectangular in shape, defined by a low earthen bank, and its age remains genuinely indeterminate. That uncertainty is itself worth pausing over. Most archaeological sites can at least be loosely placed in a period; this one simply cannot.
The house sits in the north-eastern quadrant of the ringfort known by its record number WM026-081, pressing up against the ringfort's own inner bank at the east-north-east. A ringfort, to give the briefest gloss, is a roughly circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank and ditch, common across Ireland from the early medieval period onwards and often associated with farmsteads. The practice of building within or against an existing ringfort was not unusual; later occupants frequently found these ready-made enclosures convenient, either for shelter or for the sense of boundary they provided. Here, the house makes direct use of the ringfort's bank as part of its own fabric. On the south-west side, a gap in the earthen bank marks what would have been the doorway, and the south-east edge of that entrance is defined by a single large stone, still in place.
