House - indeterminate date, Bunnamohaun, Co. Mayo

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House

House – indeterminate date, Bunnamohaun, Co. Mayo

On the southern mid-slopes of Knockmore on Clare Island, a barely perceptible outline in the grass marks what was once a small dwelling.

The foundations are so degraded that the structure reads more as a slight thickening of the earth than a ruin, the bank rising no more than 0.2 metres above the interior ground level and 0.3 metres on the outside. Without knowing what to look for, a walker could cross it without registering anything at all.

The remains sit at the western end of a flat, stone-free terrace on commonage land, with a stream passing roughly 15 metres to the south-west and a hut recorded about 25 metres to the south-east, suggesting this was once part of a small cluster of activity on the hillside. The structure itself measures approximately 4.7 metres along its longer axis and 2.7 metres across, and though it presents an almost oval shape when viewed from outside, the interior space is subrectangular. A gap of around 0.7 metres near the midpoint of the north-north-eastern side is likely all that remains of the entrance. Adjoining the house on that same side is a small roughly square annexe, about 2 metres by 2 metres, its outline now barely legible except where its south-south-western wall meets the main structure. No date has been established for the building, and its precise function and period remain unresolved, which places it in the large and quietly interesting category of Irish rural structures that resist easy classification. The island as a whole has a dense archaeological landscape, and modest remains like this one represent the ordinary texture of habitation rather than the monumental sites that tend to attract attention.

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Pete F
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