House - indeterminate date, Killeenbrack, Co. Westmeath

Co. Westmeath |

House

House – indeterminate date, Killeenbrack, Co. Westmeath

On a rocky, scrub-covered hill in County Westmeath, the lumps and banks of an ancient settlement sit quietly on the summit, overlooking the surrounding countryside.

What makes this site unusual is not any single dramatic feature but the layering of it: a cluster of house sites nested inside a ringfort, with further possible structures pressed against its outer bank, suggesting that whoever lived here was making use of every sheltered corner available to them.

A ringfort, to use the standard term, is a circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank or stone wall, typically associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland, often dating from roughly the sixth to the twelfth centuries. At Killeenbrack, the ringfort sits about thirty metres to the northwest of the hill site, and within its interior the remains of a complex of domestic structures have survived in varying states of preservation. The most substantial of these is a large rectangular hut site at the centre, defined by an earth and stone bank of some size. A gap at the western end is thought to represent the original doorway, though other breaks at the northwest and northeast corners appear to be the result of later disturbance rather than original features. Two further possible hut sites, now poorly preserved, adjoin the ringfort's bank at the north and east. A fourth candidate, wedge-shaped in plan and defined by an earthen bank, sits against the ringfort at the southwest. Whether all of these structures were in use simultaneously, or represent different phases of occupation over time, is not something the surviving evidence can answer with any certainty.

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Pete F
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