Hut site, Coomarkane, Co. Cork

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Coomarkane, Co. Cork

On a rocky east-west ridge at Coomarkane in County Cork, two stone hut sites sit barely two metres apart, their walls only half a metre high now but still legible against the shallow bog that has crept up around them over the centuries.

What makes the larger of the pair particularly unusual is a detail in its eastern and south-eastern arc: a double row of upright stone slabs, set contiguously and end-on, forming what appears to be a sandwiched inner and outer face to the wall. It is the kind of construction that rewards a slow look rather than a passing glance.

The main hut is roughly circular, seven metres in diameter, with walls that were originally around 0.8 metres thick. The entrance, just over a metre wide, faces south-east, an orientation common in early Irish vernacular structures, likely chosen to catch morning light and offer some shelter from prevailing westerly weather. The large stones that now protrude from the bog are the lower courses of what was once a more complete dry-stone wall, the upper portions long since collapsed or robbed for other uses. Hut sites of this type are generally associated with early medieval or prehistoric occupation, often interpreted as seasonal shelters used by people working upland grazing areas, though without excavation the precise date of the Coomarkane examples remains open. The proximity of the second hut site, recorded just to the west, suggests this was not a lone dwelling but part of a small cluster, perhaps a farmstead or a booley settlement where cattle were herded to higher ground in summer months.

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Pete F
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