House - indeterminate date, Dunaree Latin, Co. Monaghan

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House

House – indeterminate date, Dunaree Latin, Co. Monaghan

Within the earthen enclosure of a rath in Dunaree Latin, County Monaghan, the faint outline of a house survives as little more than a slight thickening of the ground.

A rath, for those unfamiliar with the term, is a ringfort, typically a circular area enclosed by one or more earthen banks and ditches, and among the most common archaeological monuments in the Irish landscape. What makes this particular detail worth pausing over is the house-site tucked inside the northern part of that enclosure, its shape still readable after however many centuries have passed.

The structure is subrectangular, measuring roughly 4.8 metres from northwest to southeast and 4 metres from northeast to southwest, defined by low earthen banks around 1.9 metres wide and just under half a metre in height. It is a modest footprint, broadly consistent with the kind of domestic buildings associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland, though no date has been firmly established for this particular example. The dimensions suggest a single-roomed structure, small even by the standards of the period, sheltered within the protective circuit of the rath's perimeter. Whether the house was contemporary with the rath itself or represents a later use of an already-ancient enclosure is not known.

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