House - indeterminate date, Cush, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
House
Nobody walking across the rough pasture on Slievereagh in County Limerick would have any reason to suspect that a house once stood at a particular spot near the northeastern corner of a large rectangular enclosure.
There was, as the archaeologist Seán P. Ó Ríordáin noted when he excavated the site in 1940, no surface indication whatsoever that a building had ever existed there. The house came to light only because a trench cut across the bank and fosse of the enclosure happened, more or less by accident, to intersect it.
The site sits within a wide archaeological complex on Slievereagh, known historically as the supposed location of Temaír Erann, the ancient cemetery of the Ernai tribe, a detail recorded by the antiquarian T. J. Westropp in the early twentieth century. The enclosure in which the house was found is defended on three sides by a bank and fosse, with the fourth side formed by a cluster of conjoined ring-forts, the circular earthwork enclosures common across early medieval Ireland. When Ó Ríordáin investigated the interior, he found that the house lay partly beneath the enclosure bank, though he concluded that this was most likely the result of the bank material spreading outward after it collapsed, rather than any firm evidence that the house pre-dated the enclosure. What he uncovered was a compacted clay and gravel floor in two distinct levels, the larger northern portion measuring roughly 5.5 metres by 3.3 metres, with a smaller area stepping down about 0.3 metres to the south. The floor followed the natural slope of the hillside, dropping around 25 centimetres from east to west. Thirteen post-holes were identified, ranging in depth from half a metre to just 12 centimetres, and upright stones along the floor edges indicated walls that were built of stone at the base and timber above. A shallow grouping of post-holes along the eastern side suggested a lean-to addition, while two hearths, one a setting of grouped stones with substantial charcoal deposits near the north-west of the main room, pointed to ordinary domestic life being lived here at some point difficult to date with precision.
The house site lies within the southern quadrant of the broader Cush archaeological complex, which is located on rough grazing land on Slievereagh. The complex includes multiple ring-forts, enclosures, and associated features spread across the hillside, and the area rewards careful attention to the landscape rather than any single monument. Because no above-ground trace of the house itself survives, the excavation plans and photographs published in Ó Ríordáin's 1940 report remain the most useful guide to what was found. Visitors interested in the wider complex will find that the interplay between the enclosure earthworks and the ring-forts gives a clearer sense of the site than any individual component viewed in isolation.