Hut site, Portavaud, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Settlement Sites
On a low natural ridge running across a peninsula in County Sligo, a small rectangular enclosure sits almost flush with the surrounding pasture, easy to overlook and harder still to date.
This is a hut site, the trace of a structure whose walls have long since dissolved into the earth, leaving only the faint geometry of what was once a sheltered living space.
The enclosure measures roughly five metres along its longer axis and just over three metres across, oriented roughly north-north-west to south-south-east. It is defined by a scarped earthen edge, a cut or shaped bank, rising to about 35 centimetres on the exterior, with a shallow external fosse, essentially a ditch, running around the outside. That fosse is about 1.5 metres wide and between 20 and 40 centimetres deep. The interior slopes gently to face south-west, which would have offered some advantage against the prevailing weather. The ridge it occupies is one of several very low parallel ridges crossing the peninsula that extends toward Portavaud point, and these natural features seem to have influenced where people chose to build. Where the original entrance once was, no one can now say with certainty; the ground has given up that detail entirely.