House - indeterminate date, Peast, Co. Monaghan
Co. Monaghan |
House
On a north-east-facing slope in Peast, County Monaghan, a small rectangular enclosure sits tucked against the outer bank of a much older earthwork.
It is an easy thing to walk past without registering, being defined by nothing more dramatic than a low earthen bank, roughly a metre wide and less than a metre high, enclosing a modest footprint of five metres by four. Yet that very modesty is part of what makes it curious: someone, at some point we cannot now determine, chose to build here, pressing their dwelling up against the outer face of an existing rath.
A rath, sometimes called a ringfort, is an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period, typically bounded by one or more circular earthen banks and ditches. The rath at Peast, recorded separately, provided the south-western wall of this later structure, its outer bank repurposed as a ready-made boundary. Whether the house was built centuries after the rath fell out of use, or whether the two were ever in any kind of contemporary relationship, is something the archaeological record has not resolved. The date of the house remains indeterminate, a phrase that in this context means the physical remains alone offer no firm footing for even a broad chronology. What survives is a rectangle of ground, slightly shelved into the hillside to create a level platform on the slope, and the low banks that once enclosed it.