House - 18th/19th century, Fearagha, Co. Galway

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House

House – 18th/19th century, Fearagha, Co. Galway

In the undulating grassland of Fearagha, County Galway, a low bank of earth and stone traces out a rectangle in the scrub, roughly twelve and a half metres along its longer axis and five metres across.

Bushes and at least one tree have taken root inside it, and a shallow fosse, the external ditch that once helped define the boundary of the structure, still runs around the outer edge. It is the kind of place that reads as unremarkable until you begin to understand what the shape is telling you.

The dimensions and layout suggest a modest domestic building, the sort of single-family dwelling that was common across Connacht in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. What gives the site a particular interest is its possible connection to the first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1838, one of the most detailed cartographic surveys Ireland had seen at that point, produced at a moment when many rural houses were still standing or only recently abandoned. If the correlation holds, this grassed-over bank is what remains of a structure that was already considered worth recording nearly two centuries ago. A pit dug immediately to the north-east of the site and a stony mound to the south-south-west may represent later disturbance or associated features, though their precise origins are unclear. The surrounding landscape of outcropping limestone and rough pasture is typical of this part of County Galway, and gives some sense of the conditions in which the original occupants would have lived and worked.

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Pete F
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