House - indeterminate date, Moneymore, Co. Galway

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House

House – indeterminate date, Moneymore, Co. Galway

At Moneymore in County Galway, a low ridge of stone no more than twenty centimetres above the ground traces out the ghost of a dwelling.

Roughly D-shaped in plan and about four metres across in either direction, the foundation line sits pressed against the inner face of a concentric enclosure, as though whoever built it wanted the enclosure's bank to serve as a ready-made back wall. That kind of arrangement, a small structure tucked into the sheltered interior of a ringwork, is not unusual in the Irish archaeological record, but the date of this particular example remains entirely unknown.

A concentric enclosure consists of two or more roughly circular or oval banks and ditches arranged one inside the other, and they are found scattered across the Irish landscape with functions that archaeologists still debate, ranging from high-status settlement to stock management. The Moneymore example contains at least three possible house sites in total: this one in the south-west quadrant, a second abutting it to the north, and a third lying over in the eastern sector. The antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westropp first noted the sites in 1919, making them among the earlier recorded features within the enclosure. The foundation walls here are roughly a metre wide, which is consistent with drystone construction of the kind that would once have supported a timber or turf superstructure, though without excavation it is impossible to say more about how the building was used or when it stood.

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