Booley hut, Coumaraglinmountain, Co. Waterford
Co. Waterford |
Farm Buildings
On the lower western slopes of the Monavullagh Mountains in County Waterford, a shallow arc of stones sits in rough pasture beside the upper Araglin river valley. Six metres in diameter, it is all that remains of a booley hut, a temporary dwelling of the kind used by herders during the seasonal practice of transhumance, when cattle and their minders would move to higher mountain pastures for the summer months. The practice, known in Irish as buaile, was once common across Ireland, and these small, lightly built shelters were never meant to last. That this one has left any trace at all makes it quietly notable.
What gives the site an additional layer of interest is its proximity to a burial cairn, a mound of stones typically covering an ancient funerary deposit, which lies roughly thirty metres to the south-east. The coincidence of a seasonal herding structure alongside a prehistoric monument is not unusual in the Irish uplands; generations of farmers moving animals through mountain terrain would have passed, camped near, or perhaps sheltered beside far older remains without necessarily attaching particular ceremony to them. The whole complex at Coumaraglinmountain is protected under the National Monuments (Preservation) Order No. 4 of 1996, which reflects the archaeological significance of the area taken as a whole rather than any single feature within it.