Hut site, Reynella, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Settlement Sites
On a quiet hillside in County Westmeath, a small rectangle of earth and stone marks the outline of a house that has not been lived in for centuries.
It is modest almost to the point of invisibility, yet the precision of its survival is what makes it quietly arresting. The walls of the enclosing bank, roughly 2.3 metres wide and only 0.3 metres high, still trace the full perimeter of a dwelling that measured approximately 4.7 metres north to south and 5.3 metres east to west, with an entrance gap less than a metre wide opening to the east.
The hut site sits at the centre of a ringfort, which places it within a long tradition of early medieval rural settlement in Ireland. A ringfort is typically a circular or oval enclosure defined by earthen banks and ditches, used as a farmstead and residence from roughly the sixth to the twelfth century. That a rectangular house site should survive within one is a detail worth pausing over, since such internal structures are far less commonly visible at ground level than the enclosing ringfort itself. The whole complex occupies a north-east facing slope of a natural hillock at Reynella, with a stream running close by to the north-east, suggesting the kind of careful, practical siting that characterised early settlement choices. A second possible hut site is attached to the south-east side of the main house site, hinting that whatever activity took place here was not confined to a single structure.