Hut site, Bunnamohaun, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Settlement Sites

Hut site, Bunnamohaun, Co. Mayo

On Clare Island off the Mayo coast, tucked into the north-western corner of a prehistoric enclosure at Bunnamohaun, a shallow hollow in the ground marks what was once a small dwelling.

It is easy to overlook entirely, which is perhaps part of what makes it quietly compelling. The internal diameter of the hut measures just 2.1 metres across, barely large enough to shelter one or two people, and yet the care taken in its construction is still legible in the surviving stonework.

The structure is set into the bank of the enclosure itself, a detail that suggests it was not merely placed within the enclosure but was deliberately integrated into its fabric. What remains is a subcircular depression defined on its western and northern sides by a low drystone wall, a construction technique in which stones are stacked without mortar, relying entirely on their own weight and arrangement for stability. In places this wall still stands two courses high, reaching roughly 0.4 metres. Some of the stones are set on edge or at right angles to the wall face, a common variation in prehistoric Irish drystone building. A gap on the south-south-west side, around 0.65 metres wide, is likely the original entrance. The hut sits on a mass of stone occupying most of the eastern half of the enclosure interior, and although the structure's limits are difficult to trace on its eastern and southern sides, the surviving arc of walling gives a clear enough sense of the original form.

Clare Island has been intensively studied in archaeological terms, and this hut site forms part of a broader complex. The description draws on the New Survey of Clare Island, Volume 5: Archaeology, edited by Paul Gosling, Conleth Manning and John Waddell and published by the Royal Irish Academy in 2007, which has significantly expanded understanding of the island's prehistoric and early medieval landscape.

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