Hut site, Rossmackowen Commons, Co. Cork

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Rossmackowen Commons, Co. Cork

On the steep west-facing slopes of Hungry Hill in County Cork, a small circular structure sits in a sheltered hollow, half-swallowed by bog.

It is barely three metres across, its drystone wall long since collapsed to a low, irregular ring, yet the base stones still protrude through the deep peat with enough clarity to trace the outline of what was once an enclosed space. Rushes have taken hold in the interior. A gap in the northwest arc is the most suggestive detail: it is likely where a doorway once stood, oriented, perhaps deliberately, away from the prevailing exposure of the hillside.

Drystone hut sites of this kind are found across upland Ireland, and while it is not always possible to assign a precise date or function without excavation, many belong to periods of seasonal or subsistence occupation, when people moved livestock to higher ground during summer months, a practice known as booleying, or worked marginal land during times of population pressure. This particular example has been cut slightly into the upslope on its northern side, a practical measure to create a more level floor and to gain some shelter from the gradient. The wall, when standing, would have been modest: the surviving thickness of around 0.65 metres and a height of only 0.2 metres above the bog surface suggest a structure that time and waterlogging have considerably reduced. What the bog has taken in depth, it has also preserved in outline.

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