Hut site, Foilakilly, Co. Cork

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Foilakilly, Co. Cork

Two small circular structures sit side by side on a terrace of rough hill pasture on the north-western slopes of Gouladane, looking out over Bantry Bay.

One of them is almost entirely swallowed by ferns. What remains visible is a low ring of collapsed drystone wall, roughly three and a half to four metres across, with rubble scattered across the interior and a possible break in the north-eastern arc that may once have served as a doorway. A drystone wall, as the name suggests, is built without mortar, the stones stacked and wedged to hold one another in place; over centuries, without maintenance, such walls tend to settle and spread rather than collapse outright, which is why the outline here is still legible even in its ruined state.

The two hut sites abut one another, the second pressing against the eastern side of this one, suggesting they were either built together or accumulated over time as part of a small cluster of habitation. Circular hut sites of this kind are found widely across upland Ireland and can date to anywhere from the Bronze Age through to the early medieval period, though without excavation it is rarely possible to assign a precise date to any individual example. What they represent, in general terms, is the most basic unit of rural settlement: a single roofed space, probably housing a family or a seasonal occupant, tucked into a sheltered terrace on a hillside that would have offered some protection from prevailing winds while keeping the bay in view below.

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Pete F
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