Booley hut, Cregganroe, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Farm Buildings
On a north-facing slope in County Mayo, a low ring of drystone walling sits in rough upland pasture, looking out over a spread of boggy ground below.
It is easy to walk past without registering what it is. The walls stand only thirty to fifty centimetres high and span little more than two or three metres across, which makes the structure seem almost incidental to the landscape. But this is a booley hut, one of at least ten clustered together on this rocky ridge at Cregganroe, each one a remnant of a seasonal grazing practice that once shaped the rhythms of rural Irish life across the country.
Boolying, from the Irish word buaile, referred to the custom of moving livestock to upland pastures in summer, with herders, often young people, temporarily living on the hillside to tend the animals. The shelters they built were intentionally simple, constructed quickly from whatever stone lay to hand, and abandoned again as winter approached. The hut at Cregganroe is a good example of that improvised construction: a roughly subcircular enclosure formed by drystone walling about eighty centimetres to a metre wide, with gaps on both the east and west sides, either of which may have served as the original entrance. The west wall merges directly into a north-south field wall, suggesting the whole arrangement, huts and field boundaries together, functioned as an integrated seasonal system. Immediately to the north of this particular hut, a small ancillary space was formed using the hut's own wall on one side, the field wall on another, a large natural boulder at the north-east, and rough additional walling to complete the enclosure; it may have been used for storage or as a secondary shelter. The southern wall of the hut adjoins the northern wall of a neighbouring booley hut, showing how closely these structures were grouped together.