Hut site, Ardgroom Outward, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Settlement Sites
High on the north-facing slopes of Tooreennamna Mountain in the Ardgroom area of west Cork, the rough hill pasture conceals a small circular structure whose builders went to some trouble to make it liveable.
The floor was deliberately levelled, raised slightly at the northern end and cut back into the hillside at the south, so that whoever occupied it had a flat surface to stand, sleep, or work on despite the slope outside. That kind of careful ground preparation, modest as it sounds, speaks to genuine habitation rather than a casual or temporary shelter.
What survives today is a near-circular footprint measuring roughly 4.1 metres east to west and 4 metres north to south, the outline traced by a collapsed stone wall and by intermittent stones that break through the base of an earthen bank along the south-eastern to south-western arc. The wall, where it can still be read, stood only around 0.3 metres high and was about 0.55 metres thick, suggesting either that the original structure was low-walled with a timber or turf superstructure, or simply that centuries of collapse and vegetation have reduced what was once more substantial. A single upright slab at the south-east may mark one jamb of the original entrance, which would have faced away from the worst of the prevailing weather on that exposed hillside. Circular stone hut sites of this kind are found across upland Ireland and can date anywhere from the Bronze Age through to the early medieval period, though without excavation it is impossible to assign this one a precise date.