Hut site, Kilmurry, Co. Wicklow

Co. Wicklow |

Settlement Sites

Hut site, Kilmurry, Co. Wicklow

On a north-east-facing spur of ground in Kilmurry, County Wicklow, a small flattened outline in the earth marks what may once have been somebody's home.

The feature is modest almost to the point of invisibility: a subrectangular area measuring roughly seven metres by four, with faint traces of an external bank and a slightly raised interior floor. Nothing about it announces itself, and that is precisely what makes it worth attention.

The site is tentatively identified as the remains of a traditional clay-wall house, the kind of vernacular dwelling built using compacted earth or mud, a construction method that was widespread in rural Ireland before lime mortar and mass-produced brick became standard. Such structures could be surprisingly durable, but they leave little behind once abandoned and weathered, which is why this slight depression and its surrounding bank are significant at all. The information was recorded by P. Neary, and the dimensions and orientation are about as much as survives in the documentary record. The north-east-facing aspect of the spur on which it sits would have offered some shelter from prevailing south-westerly weather, a consideration that would not have been lost on whoever chose the location.

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Pete F
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