Clochan, Eochaill, Co. Galway

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Settlement Sites

Clochan, Eochaill, Co. Galway

In a level pasture field in Eochaill, on the Aran Islands, a dry-stone building sits in a state of partial collapse, its limestone walls still holding enough shape to suggest what it once was.

The structure is a clochan, a type of early stone building constructed without mortar, typically oval or rectangular in plan, and roofed using a corbelling technique in which each course of stone slightly overhangs the one below until the opening narrows enough to be sealed at the top. This particular example is unusually large for its type, measuring 6.6 metres in length and 4.5 metres in width, with subtly rounded external corners and traces of doorways set into both the north and south walls in opposition to one another.

The corbelled roofing survives in part at the south-west corner, though much of the interior is now buried under collapsed stone from the vault above. The building forms part of a wider grouping known as Baile na mBocht, a placename that translates roughly as the townland of the poor, which already hints at something of the social or economic character the area once carried. A second structure, so far unclassified, stands roughly twelve metres to the west. Outside the southern wall, a considerable accumulation of field clearance stones has been heaped up over time, the ordinary byproduct of generations of farmers working the land around the monument. The site was noted by Kinahan as early as 1869 and has been referenced in Tim Robinson's work on the Aran Islands.

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Pete F
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