House - indeterminate date, Ballymabilla, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

House

House – indeterminate date, Ballymabilla, Co. Galway

In a stretch of level, marshy grassland at Ballymabilla in County Galway, there is a settlement that has been almost entirely swallowed by the landscape, and in part actively destroyed by quarrying.

What remains is a puzzle of low humps and scarps rather than anything obviously architectural, yet the fragments add up to something quietly compelling: a circular cashel, a house, a probable souterrain, and the ghost outlines of further structures, all arranged with a logic that only becomes legible when you know what you are looking at.

A cashel is a stone-walled enclosure, broadly equivalent to a ringfort but built from drystone rather than earthen banks, and this one measured roughly thirty metres across. Its defining wall has long since collapsed and grassed over, surviving only as a curved line running from the north-east through south to west-south-west, with a scarp filling in part of the northern arc. Centrally placed within this enclosure is a rectangular house, fourteen metres long and six metres wide, oriented east-south-east to west-north-west, with opposing doorways in its north-east and south-west walls and traces of an internal division that hints at separate functional spaces. Immediately to the west of the house lies what is interpreted as a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber typically associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland, often used for storage or concealment. Two low banks radiate outward from the house itself, to the north-west and south, suggesting further organisation of the space around it. About nine and a half metres to the north is a small L-shaped structure, three metres by two, which may be the remains of a second house; a third house lies some forty metres to the south-south-east. The date of the whole complex remains undetermined, though the combination of cashel, souterrain, and multi-structure layout is characteristic of early medieval Gaelic settlement patterns found across the west of Ireland.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of House – indeterminate date, Ballymabilla, Co. Galway. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement