House - indeterminate date, Carrowbaun, Co. Mayo

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House – indeterminate date, Carrowbaun, Co. Mayo

Beneath a mat of sod and moss in Carrowbaun, County Mayo, there may or may not be the remains of a house.

That uncertainty is not a failing of the record; it is the record. What survives is a low, roughly circular stony platform, about eleven metres east to west and nine metres north to south, sitting within the interior of a cashel, a type of stone-walled enclosure typically associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland. The platform was deliberately built up on its eastern side to level out the natural slope of the ground inside the cashel, a detail that speaks to careful, considered construction, even if whoever did the constructing left no other trace of themselves.

The platform presents differently depending on which side you approach. On the western half, a slightly raised stony rim survives, modest in height but clear enough in outline. On the eastern half, the edge has slumped into a broader, more gradual scarp, dropping about a metre and a half externally over a slope some four metres wide. Running across the middle of it all is a ruined field wall, a later intrusion that cuts through the cashel interior and crosses the platform without ceremony, as if whoever built it either did not notice or did not care what lay beneath. The platform itself is grassed over, and the ground feels stony underfoot even through the turf, which is often the only indication that something structural lies below. Whether this constitutes the remains of a house, a raised working surface, or something else entirely, has not been determined.

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Pete F
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