Hut site, Canalough, Co. Cork

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Canalough, Co. Cork

What survives here is modest almost to the point of invisibility: a low bank of earth and stone, largely swallowed by long grass, tracing the outline of a small rectangular structure on a terrace above Blackball Harbour in west Cork.

The bank stands no more than 35 centimetres high and measures roughly 90 centimetres across, enclosing a floor plan of about 5.2 metres north to south and 2.7 metres east to west. Gaps have opened in the bank, particularly on the eastern side, and a scatter of stones lies half-buried across the southern half of the interior. On its own, it would be easy to walk past without a second thought.

What makes the spot worth pausing over is the company it keeps. Within 25 metres, two further hut sites sit along the same rough pasture ridge, one 10 metres to the west and another 15 metres to the east, all three positioned on the northern slope of an east-west ridge with the sea close by to the south. Hut sites of this kind, generally understood as the remains of simple stone or earthen-walled shelters used for seasonal or agricultural purposes, are scattered across the Irish landscape, but finding three in such close proximity along a coastal terrace suggests something more deliberate: a small cluster of structures, possibly used together, looking out over the harbour. The rocky outcrops breaking through the pasture around them give some sense of the landscape these builders were working with, levelling a terrace on an otherwise uneven ridge.

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Pete F
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