Hut site, Kilcorney, Co. Clare

Co. Clare |

Settlement Sites

Hut site, Kilcorney, Co. Clare

On a north-facing slope in County Clare, the ground holds the outline of a small subcircular structure whose entrance has entirely disappeared.

The hut sits in a shallow depression at the edge of a plateau, and what remains of its walls is uneven: on the western side, a proper double-faced stone wall survives to a width of about 1.2 metres, while elsewhere the structure is defined only by a low earthen bank, its internal height rarely exceeding half a metre, with occasional facing-stones breaking through the grass. No doorway can be identified. Taken on its own, it might read as little more than a slight ripple in a field. But it does not sit on its own.

The hut is embedded in a sprawling, multi-period field system, one of those layered landscapes where centuries of activity have been pressed into the same ground without any single era fully erasing another. Field banks extend outward from the hut to the east and south-west, connecting it to a wider network of enclosures, houses, and cairns. Nineteen metres to the west lies another enclosure, linked to the hut by a grass-covered bank that runs from its north-western side. Sixty-five metres to the south sits a further enclosure containing a prehistoric house, a second possible house, and a burial cairn. Another enclosure stands about 88 metres to the north-west. Taken together, this cluster of features spans from prehistoric to post-medieval times, a range that Grant (2010) noted encompasses numerous enclosures, houses, hut sites, and cairns in the immediate vicinity. The hut itself cannot be dated with precision from surface evidence alone, but its integration into that long sequence of use suggests it was one episode in a landscape occupied and reorganised repeatedly across many generations.

The plateau edge setting, with a natural east-west ravine roughly 115 metres to the north, would have made this a practical location; sheltered slightly by the depression, with the ravine providing a natural boundary and the slope giving some orientation away from the prevailing north. What a visitor encounters today is mostly grass, low banks, and the occasional stone just visible at the surface, but the spatial relationships between the various features, the way field banks radiate outward from this single hut, give a sense of a working agricultural landscape rather than an isolated monument.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Hut site, Kilcorney, Co. Clare. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement