Hut site, Ballykilmurry, Co. Waterford
Co. Waterford |
Settlement Sites
On a east-facing slope in the Parish of Kilrossanty, two features once sat just outside the edge of a rath, one circular in shape and the other rectangular. They may have been hut-sites, small domestic structures where people lived and worked in close proximity to the enclosure but technically beyond its boundary. The distinction matters: a rath, essentially a circular earthen enclosure used as a farmstead during the early medieval period, would have had its own internal logic of space, and whatever occupied the ground just outside it tells a slightly different story about how the wider settlement was organised.
The only account of these features comes from a paper published in 1933 by L. Mongey in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, which dealt with a ringfort and souterrain at Ballykilmurry. A souterrain is an underground stone-lined passage, often associated with early medieval settlements and used variously for storage or refuge. Mongey noted the two external features in passing, identifying their position east of the rath's perimeter and tentatively reading them as hut-sites. Whether they were ever properly excavated or simply observed on the surface is not clear, but they do not survive in any form today. What remains is only the record of their having existed, and the question of what they were doing there, just outside the wall of a settlement that itself has since largely disappeared into the hillside.