Structure, Barntick, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Utility Structures
On a south-facing slope in County Clare, a small rectangle of brick floor sits quietly beneath the earth, most of it still unexcavated, its full story intact only in whatever lies undisturbed below the surface.
What is known comes almost accidentally, the result of topsoil-stripping during construction work on the Bord Gáis Éireann pipeline to the west of the site. That kind of infrastructure project, cutting through countryside with mechanical precision, occasionally opens a window into something older, and here it did exactly that.
The exposed remains measured roughly 3.6 metres north to south and 2.7 metres east to west, a brick floor set against a loose stone wall foundation. Among the finds recovered were post-medieval ceramics, placing the structure's use somewhere in the broad period after the sixteenth century, when industrially produced pottery began to circulate more widely across Ireland. Post-medieval in this context does not mean recent; it simply means the site belongs to that long stretch of history after the medieval period proper but before the modern era, a span that encompasses plantation, famine, and agricultural transformation alike. The excavation was recorded by Halpin in 2004. What the building actually was, a farm outbuilding, a small dwelling, something more functional, remains an open question, since only a portion of the remains was ever examined.