Souterrain, Cappagh, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Settlement Sites
In a field at Cappagh in County Galway, a shallow depression in the earth presents archaeologists with an unusually stubborn question: is this the collapsed remnant of an underground passage, or simply the ghost of a lime kiln?
The hollow, roughly pear-shaped and measuring some 8.8 metres in length and up to 2.5 metres across, sits no deeper than a metre at its lowest point. Two flagstones protrude from the sod at the shallower, north-north-easterly end, standing roughly a metre apart, with larger stones visible along the sides and floor, dividing the depression into two unequal sections. That ambiguity, the honest uncertainty of what this thing actually is, gives the site its particular character.
The feature lies within the western half of a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead common across early medieval Ireland, typically consisting of a circular earthen bank surrounding a domestic settlement. Souterrains, the underground stone-lined tunnels and chambers associated with many such ringforts, were likely used for cool storage or as places of refuge. The narrow connecting passage between chambers was known as a creep, and the opposing flagstones here, along with the stone-lined sides, are consistent with that kind of arrangement. However, a lime kiln, a stone-built structure used for burning limestone to produce agricultural lime, can leave a similarly shaped hollow when its fabric is robbed for building material elsewhere. The published archaeological inventory for North Galway, compiled by Olive Alcock, Kathy de hÓra, and Paul Gosling, describes the remains plainly as open to interpretation, which is a scholarly way of saying that the ground is not giving up its answer easily.