Hut site, Crumlin, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Settlement Sites
In a pasture field in Crumlin, County Clare, a low ring of tumbled stone sits in the grass, easy to miss and easier still to misread.
What looks like a natural scatter of fieldstone is in fact the collapsed walling of an early hut site, its interior roughly sub-circular and measuring around seven metres by five. The wall survives to a height of only about 0.6 metres, which gives some sense of how much has been lost to time and to the slow recycling of stone that farming life always demands.
What makes the site more interesting is its relationship to the surrounding landscape. Immediately to its north-east sits a cashel, the term for a stone-walled enclosure of early medieval origin, typically circular and built to define and protect a farmstead or small settlement. This hut lies just outside that cashel to the north-east, and a second hut site sits almost opposite, outside the cashel wall to the west-south-west. The pairing suggests a cluster of domestic or agricultural activity arranged around the enclosure rather than within it, a pattern that hints at a small community or extended household using the cashel as its organisational centre. Whether these structures were contemporary with one another or represent different phases of use is not certain, but their positioning is deliberate enough to suggest a considered layout rather than casual settlement.