Hut site, Ballymooney, Co. Wicklow

Co. Wicklow |

Settlement Sites

Hut site, Ballymooney, Co. Wicklow

On a steep west-facing slope in Ballymooney, overlooking a ravine, the outline of a small structure sits almost invisibly in the landscape.

What marks it out is not drama but geometry: a low earthen bank traces a near-perfect square, roughly four metres to a side, open along its southern edge. That opening is one of the more telling details. It suggests deliberate construction rather than natural accumulation, the ghost of a building whose walls have long since dissolved back into the hillside.

Hut sites of this kind are found scattered across upland Wicklow, and they are frustratingly difficult to date without excavation. The quadrangular plan here, with its low defining bank, is consistent with a range of periods from the early medieval to the post-medieval, when small seasonal shelters were used by those working or grazing animals on marginal land. The west-facing position, though it would catch the afternoon light, also means exposure to the prevailing weather, which may say something about the practical constraints of the site rather than any preference. The ravine below would have offered a degree of shelter and perhaps a reliable water source, both considerations that mattered to anyone spending time at altitude in the Wicklow uplands.

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Pete F
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