House - indeterminate date, Point (Dunkineely Ed), Co. Donegal
On a karst ridge in Dunkineely, County Donegal, the remnants of an old dwelling tell a quiet story of rural Irish life from centuries past.
House - indeterminate date, Point (Dunkineely Ed), Co. Donegal
The stone footings outline a roughly rectangular house that once stood here, measuring about 6.4 metres east to west and 8 metres north to south. What remains is a low drystone wall, less than a metre thick and only 30 centimetres high, marking where the structure’s walls once stood. Though the exact date remains uncertain, the building appears to predate 1700, placing it firmly within Ireland’s early modern period.
The site isn’t isolated; it forms part of a broader archaeological landscape that speaks to organised rural settlement. Field systems stretch both east and west of the house site, suggesting this was once part of an active agricultural community. Just 15 metres to the southwest, another set of stone foundations hints at a second, more irregularly shaped hut, possibly contemporary with the main dwelling. These paired structures might represent a small farmstead or extended family holding, common arrangements in pre-industrial Ireland.
A particularly intriguing feature runs from the northern side of the main house site: a line of flat stone slabs that may have formed part of a field wall or garden boundary. Such boundaries were essential to rural Irish households, defining not just property lines but also creating protected spaces for kitchen gardens and small cultivation plots. The careful preservation of these features on the karst ridge offers modern visitors a tangible connection to the everyday lives of those who worked this land three centuries ago, their stone boundaries still marking the landscape long after the buildings themselves have crumbled.