Hut site, Ardgroom Outward, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Settlement Sites
On the north-facing slopes of Tooreennamna Mountain in the Ardgroom Outward townland of west Cork, a circular stone hut sits so quietly in the rough hill pasture that it barely announces itself.
Its diameter is just over two metres, barely large enough to shelter a single person in any comfort, and what survives is only the lower courses of a stone wall, thickened by a low grass-covered earthen bank on the outside. The interior is filled with rubble, and the whole structure has the slightly sunken, absorbed quality of something that has been slowly claimed by the hillside over a very long time.
What gives the site a particular neatness is the way its builders adapted it to the slope. The north side of the floor is raised slightly, while the south side is cut into the uphill ground to the same modest depth, levelling the interior against the natural gradient of the mountain. It is a small but telling piece of practical engineering. Hut sites of this kind, found across upland Ireland, are often difficult to date precisely without excavation; they may be prehistoric, early medieval, or connected with the seasonal practice of transhumance, in which people moved livestock to higher pastures during summer months and built temporary shelters for themselves nearby. Another hut site of the same type lies roughly thirty metres to the south, suggesting this was not an isolated structure but part of a small cluster of activity on this stretch of hillside.