Hut site, Ballyfaris, Co. Sligo

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Ballyfaris, Co. Sligo

Inside an ancient earthwork enclosure in County Sligo, tucked into its north-western corner, sits something easy to overlook entirely: a roughly circular depression no wider than a modest garden shed, outlined by a low earthen bank that barely rises to knee height.

It measures three metres across, with the bank itself spanning a metre and a half in width and standing only forty-five centimetres at its highest. To walk past it without knowing what to look for would be entirely understandable. But that unassuming ring in the ground is likely all that survives of a dwelling, the faint trace of a life once lived within the protection of a larger enclosure.

The enclosure in question is the Ballyfaris rath, a type of circular earthwork, sometimes called a ringfort, that was a common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically serving as a farmstead surrounded by an earthen bank and ditch. The hut site lies within the rath's north-western quadrant, suggesting it was a subsidiary structure inside the main enclosure rather than a standalone building. Structures of this kind, small and circular, built from perishable materials such as timber, wattle, and thatch, rarely survive above ground in any dramatic form. What remains here is the earthen foundation or wall footing, the only durable evidence of what was once a roofed space.

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