Hut site, Derreenacrinnig, Co. Cork

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Derreenacrinnig, Co. Cork

On a north-west-facing hillslope in Derreenacrinnig, County Cork, a small arrangement of mossy boulders marks what was once a dwelling.

It would be easy to walk past without a second glance: the wall survives only in its lowest courses, jumbled and poorly preserved, barely half a metre high. Yet the outline it describes is a D-shape, roughly two metres across on its north-south axis, with a straight southern side just over two metres long. This combination of a curving wall and a flat side is characteristic of early hut sites found across Ireland, simple stone shelters whose exact dating is often difficult to pin down but which belong broadly to the early medieval or prehistoric periods.

The wall itself is built from large boulder-type stones, the kind gathered from the surrounding ground rather than quarried or dressed. Moss and sods have crept over much of the surface, softening the edges and making the structure feel as though it is slowly being reclaimed by the hillside. The rough grazing land around it, scattered with occasional surface boulders, gives some sense of the environment in which whoever built this shelter was working. What makes the spot particularly interesting is that it does not stand alone. Another hut site lies roughly three metres to the east, and a second sits around thirty metres further east again, suggesting that this was not an isolated habitation but part of a small cluster of structures, perhaps occupied at the same time, perhaps representing different phases of use across the same stretch of hillside.

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Pete F
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