Hut site, Ballyremon Commons, Co. Wicklow

Co. Wicklow |

Settlement Sites

Hut site, Ballyremon Commons, Co. Wicklow

On Ballyremon Commons in County Wicklow, a low oval ring in the ground marks what was once a dwelling.

It is easy to miss: just a slight earthen bank, no more than forty centimetres high, tracing an oval roughly eight metres across from east to west and seven metres from north to south. Two boulders flank what may have been an entrance on the south side, orientated to catch whatever warmth the slope offered.

Hut sites of this kind are among the more quietly ambiguous features of the Irish landscape. The form, an oval or circular space defined by a low bank or footing of earth and stone, turns up across upland and marginal ground throughout the country, and can belong to almost any period from the Bronze Age onwards. They are often associated with seasonal or temporary occupation, the kind of structure a family or small group might raise while working summer grazing land. The position here is telling: level ground at a break in a south-facing slope, which would have offered some shelter from prevailing winds while remaining accessible from the hillside above and the lower ground below. The slight profile of the bank suggests the walls above it were probably of perishable material, timber or turf, leaving only this shallow earthwork as evidence of whatever life was once organised within it.

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Pete F
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