Hut site, Lecarrow, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Settlement Sites
At the northern edge of a low earthen enclosure in Lecarrow, County Sligo, there survives a circular depression and bank so modest in scale that it would be easy to walk past it without a second thought.
The whole structure measures just four metres across, defined by an irregular bank of earth and stone no more than thirty centimetres high and two metres wide, yet that ring of material is the outline of a dwelling, a space in which someone once lived or sheltered.
The hut sits within a larger enclosure, a type of feature common across early medieval Ireland, where a surrounding bank or wall, sometimes called a bawn in later contexts, defined a domestic or agricultural space. Here, the enclosure's own bank doubles as the northern and north-eastern boundary of the hut, suggesting the two structures were conceived together, or at least closely related in use. The most telling detail is a one-metre gap in the bank on the south-western side, the original entrance, aligned to face away from the prevailing north-easterly exposure. Small as it is, that deliberate break in the earthwork is the clearest evidence that what remains is not a natural formation but a considered piece of construction.