Hut site, An Carn Mór Thiar, Co. Galway

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, An Carn Mór Thiar, Co. Galway

Tucked into the north-western corner of a larger enclosure on the slopes above An Carn Mór Thiar in County Galway, a small hut site sits so quietly in the landscape that its outline is almost entirely reclaimed by grass and tumbled stone.

What gives it away is the low, continuous bank that traces a roughly circular shape across the ground, the kind of form that, once your eye learns to read it, becomes unmistakable.

The structure measures approximately 4.2 metres north to south and just under 4 metres east to west internally, making it a compact space by any measure. Its walls survive only as a spread of earth and collapsed boulders, the base reaching about 2.25 metres wide while the bank itself stands a modest 0.22 metres above the interior and exterior ground surfaces. That near-symmetry suggests considerable slippage and spread over a long period. Hut sites of this kind, essentially the remains of simple circular or subcircular shelters built from stone and earth, appear across the west of Ireland in association with enclosures, field systems, and occasional clusters of related structures. They are generally associated with early medieval settlement, though without excavation it is rarely possible to assign a precise date to any individual example. What is notable here is its position within the north-western quadrant of a larger enclosure, suggesting it formed part of a deliberate spatial arrangement rather than standing in isolation. No entrance is now visible, which may reflect the degree of collapse, or simply the difficulty of identifying a break in such a low and degraded bank.

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Pete F
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