Midden, Glebe, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Settlement Sites
Just north of Skreen Church of Ireland in County Sligo, a quiet patch of ground holds the compressed remnants of meals eaten, shells cracked, and bones discarded over many centuries.
This is a midden, essentially a refuse heap left by people who lived on or near the spot, and what makes it more than mere rubbish is what it signals about the depth of occupation in this particular corner of Sligo. Middens accumulate slowly and speak to continuity; the fact that this one was associated with a habitation site places it within a lived landscape rather than an isolated curiosity.
The midden sits within a cluster of Early Christian and later medieval ecclesiastical remains at Glebe, placing it in company with features that span roughly a thousand years of religious and domestic life in the area. References in the National Museum of Ireland Topographical File from 1962, and in a 1964 study by A. T. Lucas, confirm that the midden formed part of a broader habitation site. Lucas was a significant figure in Irish material culture studies, and his noting of this site suggests it was considered of genuine archaeological interest rather than incidental. The proximity to Skreen church, itself with Early Christian origins, implies that secular and ecclesiastical life here were never entirely separate; people lived, worked, and discarded the evidence of daily existence within sight of the ecclesiastical enclosure.