Hut site, Bunnamohaun, Co. Mayo

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Bunnamohaun, Co. Mayo

On Clare Island, off the Mayo coast, a small oval depression in the ground is easy enough to walk past without a second glance.

What it actually represents is the surviving trace of a hut site, so reduced by time that it now measures little more than two metres across at its widest point, its outline held together by a low bank and scarp of angular stones that rises no more than 0.4 metres at its highest. The north-eastern side preserves what is probably the entrance, a narrow gap just 35 centimetres wide, flanked by a single deliberately placed stone on one side. Everything about it is modest, almost apologetic in scale, and that is precisely what makes it worth attention.

The hut sits within the inner face of the bank of a larger enclosure at Bunnamohaun, sharing the space with at least one other recorded feature. In the south-eastern arc of the hut's own boundary, a long thin slab, just over a metre in length and set originally on its edge as an internal revetment, has since tilted outward, suggesting the slow work of centuries of settlement and weather. This kind of revetment, using a single upright stone to reinforce an earthen or rubble bank from within, is a small but telling detail: it points to a structure that was deliberately built rather than simply accumulated. The archaeology of Clare Island was examined in depth in the New Survey of Clare Island, Volume 5, edited by Paul Gosling, Conleth Manning, and John Waddell and published by the Royal Irish Academy in 2007, and it is from that survey that the careful measurements and observations about this hut derive.

The island itself is reached by ferry from Roonagh Pier near Louisburgh, and the landscape holds a remarkable density of early remains. The hut at Bunnamohaun is not marked or interpreted on the ground, so finding it requires some prior orientation. What a visitor is looking for is a slight hollow, grassy and unassuming, with its stony kerb barely proud of the surrounding surface, tucked against the inner edge of an enclosure bank.

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Pete F
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