House - indeterminate date, Poulacarran, Co. Clare

Co. Clare |

House

House – indeterminate date, Poulacarran, Co. Clare

In a field of level pasture just northwest of Carran Church in County Clare, a low scatter of earth and stone barely announces itself as a house at all.

What survives is largely a suggestion: a rectangular footprint measuring roughly nine metres east to west and a little over four metres north to south, with walls that have been robbed out or levelled almost entirely on the north and west sides. Only the eastern end retains any clear masonry. The rest traces itself as a faint bank in the ground, the kind of outline that reads more clearly on a dry summer morning when shadows are long.

This structure sits at the centre of a small settlement cluster of six houses overlooking the Poulacarran Valley, gathered together in the kind of tight rural grouping that was once common across the west of Ireland, particularly in areas of thin soil and communal land use. No date has been firmly established for the house, which places it in the frustrating but not unusual category of rural vernacular structures whose origins are difficult to pin down without excavation. Inside, a north-south dividing wall once separated the building into two rooms, an eastern chamber of roughly 3.8 metres and a western one of about 3.1 metres, a modest two-room plan typical of smaller domestic buildings across many centuries. A road or trackway extends southward from the southwest corner, suggesting this was not an isolated dwelling but one with practical connections to the wider landscape. Another house of the same cluster stands about 7.5 metres to the northwest, close enough to suggest neighbours who were very nearly sharing a wall.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of House – indeterminate date, Poulacarran, Co. Clare. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement