Booley hut, Cloghoge, Co. Wicklow
Co. Wicklow |
Farm Buildings
Beside the Cloghoge Brook in the upland heathland of County Wicklow, two small oval enclosures sit so low in the landscape that a casual walker might step over their banks without noticing them at all.
These are booley huts, the seasonal shelters used by herders who practised transhumance, the old pastoral custom of driving cattle to higher ground in summer and returning to the lowlands before winter. The practice was once common across Ireland, and the word "booley" derives from the Irish "buaile", meaning a milking place or summer pasture. What survives here are not stone walls or dramatic ruins, but the faintest outlines of human habitation, defined by low sod banks that have been slowly flattening into the earth for generations.
The two structures sit close together, separated by only around five metres. The larger of the pair measures roughly six metres by two and a half metres internally and is outlined by a sod bank between one and one and a half metres wide, though it is considerably broken down in places. The smaller hut, to its north, is more compact at four metres by two, with a similarly low bank. Neither would have been much taller than a person's shoulder at their original height, and today the banks stand only twenty to forty centimetres above the surrounding ground. Their position on low ground beside the brook makes practical sense: water close at hand, some shelter from the exposed heath above, and grazing land within reach.