Hut site, Carran, Co. Clare

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Carran, Co. Clare

On a limestone plateau in the Burren, near the village of Carran in County Clare, a rough rectangle of upright stone slabs marks the outline of a dwelling that has stood, more or less quietly, for an indeterminate stretch of centuries.

The slabs rise to about a metre in height and define an interior space measuring roughly 7.6 metres north to south and 6.5 metres east to west, just large enough to suggest a modest but serious structure. What makes this particular site slightly stranger than it might otherwise appear is a single detail on one of the eastern slabs: what may be a small cupmark pressed into its inner face. Cupmarks, shallow circular depressions pecked into stone, are generally associated with prehistoric activity, and their presence, even tentatively, shifts the atmosphere of a site considerably.

The hut sits on a plateau of limestone pavement, the distinctive karst landscape for which the Burren is known, where bare slabs of carboniferous limestone are divided by deep fissures called grikes that shelter a surprising variety of plant life. Around the structure, rough pasture and hazel scrub form the immediate setting. The uprights that define the walls are limestone slabs, which is unsurprising given that the material is essentially underfoot across the whole region. About 45 metres to the south-west lies a separate enclosure, a walled or banked area that may have functioned in relation to the hut as a pen, a yard, or some other bounded space, though the precise relationship between the two features remains unspecified. Whether the hut and enclosure are contemporary is not recorded, and the site has not, on available evidence, been excavated or closely dated.

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Pete F
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