Hut site, Coom, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Settlement Sites
On a south-east-facing slope at Coom in County Cork, two small circular hut sites sit pressed against one another in rough hill pasture, their drystone walls long since collapsed and their interiors choked with rushes and rubble.
One of them measures just 1.8 metres in diameter, barely wide enough for a person to lie down, which makes its original function an open question. Structures of this scale are generally interpreted as shelters, booley huts associated with seasonal grazing, or small enclosures connected to agricultural or pastoral activity, but without excavation the specifics remain uncertain.
What survives is modest but legible. The collapsed drystone wall, built without mortar in the traditional manner of dry-laid stone construction, still stands around half a metre high in places, and its lower courses protrude through the surface of the bog, suggesting the ground has grown up around the structure over time as peat slowly accumulated. Rubble has slipped downslope to the south-east, following the natural lie of the land. The second hut site abuts this one from the south-west, the two structures sharing a relationship that implies they were either built together or used in connection with one another, though whether simultaneously or across different periods is unknown.