House - indeterminate date, Kilclooney, Co. Waterford
Co. Waterford |
House
On a heather-covered ledge in the Comeragh Mountains, the foundations of a large rectangular building sit in quiet obscurity, recorded on Ordnance Survey maps as far back as 1840 yet assigned no firm date and no clear name. The structure measures nearly twenty metres from north to south and ten metres east to west, its walls surviving to between half a metre and a metre in height, built from stone bonded with clay rather than mortar. What makes it quietly puzzling is the question of who built it, and why, at this particular elevation, overlooking the col between the main mountain mass and Croughaun Hill to the east.
The walls are substantial, between one and one point two metres wide, which suggests something built to last rather than a temporary shelter. There appear to be entrances near the northern end of each of the long walls, and the western entrance preserves an external rebate, a cut or recess in the stonework, that may have held a doorpost. No original internal divisions survive, so whether the interior was once partitioned into rooms or left as a single large space is impossible to say. Two small drystone cells, built using dry-laid unmortared stone, are set against the inner face of the north wall; these feel like later additions, possibly shelters for animals or a person tending them, constructed after the main building had fallen out of its original use. The presence of the structure on both the 1840 and 1927 editions of the six-inch Ordnance Survey map confirms it was a known landmark across nearly a century, even if its original function and the period of its construction remain unresolved.