Hut site, Meenaduff, Co. Cork

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Meenaduff, Co. Cork

At the foot of the south-eastern slopes of Miskish Mountain in west Cork, a rough circle of upright stone slabs barely breaks the surface of a cutaway bog, the remnant outline of what was once a small circular dwelling.

The whole structure measures only about 4.6 metres east to west and 4.4 metres north to south, making it a modest space by any reckoning, yet the deliberate arrangement of the slabs, set contiguously along the perimeter, is enough to read the shape of a former life in the landscape.

Cutaway bog, where peat has been harvested over generations, tends to expose what lay hidden beneath the surface, and here the shallow remaining bog still half-conceals the structure. The slabs protrude only around 0.2 metres above ground, and the circuit is intermittent rather than complete, but the south-east to north-west arc survives best, where the largest stone, measuring roughly 0.95 metres long and 0.25 metres wide, can still be picked out. Circular hut sites of this kind are found across Ireland and belong to a long tradition of drystone or slab-footed construction, though without excavation it is difficult to assign a precise date to any individual example. The surrounding rough pasture and the encroachment of rushes have done their best to absorb the remains back into the bog.

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Pete F
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