Hut site, Com Uí Chlúmháin, Co. Cork

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Com Uí Chlúmháin, Co. Cork

On the south-facing slopes of Carrignaspirroge, in the rough hill grazing of Com Uí Chlúmháin, a low curve of drystone walling pushes up through the surface of a shallow bog.

The shape it describes is a D, flat on one side and curved on the other, a form common to ancient Irish hut sites where a straight southern wall would have caught whatever warmth the hillside offered. What survives are the lower courses only, partially collapsed, the wall some sixty centimetres thick and roughly half a metre high in places. It is not dramatic in scale, but the geometry is still legible after what may be centuries of slow submersion into the bog.

The structure measures 4.8 metres north to south, with the straight southern side running to five metres in length. Attached to its south-western corner is a small rectangular annexe, just two metres east to west and under a metre deep, its walls still standing to around eighty centimetres. Scattered nearby are stone slabs that suggest the annexe, at least, may once have been roofed using lintels, flat stones laid horizontally across the tops of the walls rather than any timber or turf covering. Drystone construction of this kind, built without mortar and relying entirely on the careful fitting of stones, was widely used in upland and pastoral settings across Ireland, and examples range in date from the early medieval period through to comparatively recent times. Without excavation, this particular structure cannot be dated with confidence, and the notes attach no period to it.

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Pete F
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