Settlement cluster, Oldcourt, Co. Wicklow
Co. Wicklow |
Settlement Sites
On the north-west-facing lower slope of Woodend Hill in County Wicklow, a narrow artificial path climbs in a dog-leg across rough, stony ground, and along its length the outlines of about fifteen rectangular buildings survive in the hillside.
The settlement is not marked by any monument or interpretive sign. What remains are foundations, terraces, and carefully placed rough stone blocks edging both the uphill and downslope sides of each platform, the ground between them still unimproved rough pasture. To someone walking past without looking carefully, it could read as nothing more than a lumpy, rocky slope.
The cluster is irregular in its overall arrangement, which is itself telling. Communities that planned a settlement from scratch tended toward more uniform layouts; the dog-leg path and the scattered placing of most structures here suggest incremental growth, each household finding a workable shelf on the steep slope rather than following a single master plan. The exception is a group of four buildings on the western side, where the layout becomes noticeably more orderly, with the structures aligned north-east to south-west along a small terrace. The largest of these reach approximately eleven metres by five metres externally, substantial enough to have been proper dwellings rather than field shelters or byres. Whether this western cluster represents an earlier, more organised core, or simply a patch of ground that lent itself to regular arrangement, is not recorded. Several of the other platforms across the site are defined only by their terracing and the stone edging, the walls above ground level long since collapsed or robbed for use elsewhere.