Hut site, Foilakilly, Co. Cork

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Foilakilly, Co. Cork

On the NW-facing slopes of Gouladane, above the waters of Bantry Bay, a scatter of large stones lies almost entirely buried beneath ferns.

Oval in plan and barely the size of a modest garden shed, roughly 2.8 metres along its longer axis, this collapsed structure is what survives of a small drystone hut, its walls reduced to a low, tumbled ring no more than 35 centimetres high. Drystone construction uses no mortar; stones are carefully fitted together by weight and geometry alone, a technique found across Ireland from prehistory through to relatively recent centuries of marginal farming life.

What makes the site quietly interesting is not just its modest dimensions but its situation. It sits on a NE-SW terrace cut into rough hill pasture, a level shelf in the slope that would have offered some shelter and a working surface on otherwise difficult ground. A second hut site of the same type abuts it directly to the west, suggesting that whatever activity took place here was not entirely solitary. Whether these were seasonal shelters for those working the high ground, small agricultural outbuildings, or something older, the notes do not say, and the ferns have long since taken over any remaining legibility at ground level.

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Pete F
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