Hut site, Rodeen, Co. Cork

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Rodeen, Co. Cork

On a south-facing slope at Rodeen, half-swallowed by blanket bog, a low circular earthwork marks the outline of a dwelling that has not seen regular use for a very long time.

The structure is modest even by the standards of ancient Irish habitation: roughly six and a half metres across, its enclosing bank rising only about thirty centimetres above the surrounding ground. What makes it quietly compelling is precisely that modesty, and the way the landscape has been slowly reclaiming it.

The remains consist of a grassy bank, around one and a half metres wide, running from west-northwest to south-southwest, through which a base course of stone wall still protrudes. This is a hut site, a term used by archaeologists to describe the foundations or low earthwork traces of a simple, usually circular, structure, often associated with seasonal occupation of upland or marginal ground. The surrounding blanket bog, part of which has been cut away for fuel at some point, complicates any straightforward reading of the site. On the south-southwest to west-northwest arc, the bank and stones become indistinct, and it is possible that uncut bog has either obscured or, over centuries of slow growth and pressure, actually displaced whatever originally enclosed that portion of the structure. The site sits on rough hill grazing, the kind of terrain that was worked and walked across for generations without ever being considered remarkable enough to record until relatively recently.

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Pete F
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