Midden, Glen, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Settlement Sites

Midden, Glen, Co. Mayo

On the south-eastern shore of Clare Island, a storm in 2014 peeled back the face of a small coastal cliff and revealed something that had been quietly accumulating for centuries: a midden, the archaeological term for a refuse deposit left by past inhabitants, composed largely of limpet and periwinkle shells, along with fragments of animal and bird bone.

It sits exposed in cross-section in the upper levels of the rocky cliff at the north-western end of a small cove, a thin band of domestic debris measuring roughly a metre in length and just ten centimetres thick. Above it lies a layer of soil, then a sod layer, and above that, scattered fragments of slate. The whole sequence reads like a compressed stratigraphy of occupation and abandonment, visible now only because the sea decided to intervene.

Middens of this kind are relatively common finds along the Irish Atlantic coast, but their survival depends entirely on conditions remaining stable enough to preserve them. This one was hidden beneath the surface until storm action exposed it, which also means that further erosion threatens what remains. The shells themselves, predominantly limpets and periwinkles, are characteristic of coastal subsistence gathering, the kind of everyday foraging that left traces all along Ireland's western seaboard from prehistoric times through the medieval period and beyond. What makes the location quietly interesting is its proximity to a tower house, a fortified late-medieval residence of the kind built by Gaelic lords and Anglo-Norman families across Ireland, which stands approximately fifteen metres to the north. Whether the midden is connected to that structure or predates it entirely is not established, but the nearness of the two sites suggests this small cove was a place of sustained, layered human activity over a long stretch of time.

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Pete F
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