Hut site, Bunnamohaun, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Settlement Sites
On the north-western tip of Clare Island, roughly two hundred metres from cliffs that drop sharply into the Atlantic, a loose arc of stones curves out of the grass.
Most visitors to the island, if they come this far at all, would walk straight past it. What they would be passing is a possible hut site, a rough semicircle of loose stones measuring somewhere between three and a half and four metres across the north-south axis, likely representing only the western half of what was once a small circular structure. The rest has either collapsed inward or vanished entirely beneath the sod.
The site sits on a rocky knoll in open coastal commonage, and its interest lies not so much in the structure itself as in the landscape surrounding it. Immediately to the east runs a field wall, irregular and meandering, extending about thirty-five metres across the slope of the knoll. This is not an isolated feature. It belongs to an extensive relict field system that spreads across the western, northern, and eastern slopes and continues outward to the south and west. Relict field systems are the fossilised remains of earlier agricultural organisation, boundaries and enclosures that were once actively maintained but have long since fallen out of use, surviving only as low earthworks or stone lines in the vegetation. Taken together, the hut site, the field wall, and the broader system suggest a settlement pattern whose age is not precisely known but whose abandonment is clearly long-standing. Roughly forty-five metres to the south lies a possible cairn, a mound of stones that may mark a burial or simply represent field clearance, and the uncertainty around both features is itself telling: this is a corner of Clare Island that rewards patience and close attention rather than easy answers.