Hut site, Fananierin, Co. Wicklow
Co. Wicklow |
Settlement Sites
On the lower slopes of Fananierin Mountain in County Wicklow, where rough grazing runs down towards the Drumgoff Brook valley, a circle of stones sits in the grass that is easy to walk past without a second thought.
It measures just 2.7 metres in diameter, its defining wall barely 30 centimetres high and a metre thick, with a gap on the east-north-east side that would once have served as an entrance. What it was used for, and by whom, the stones do not say plainly.
This small structure is part of a broader scatter of similar features on the mountain. A researcher named Price recorded a number of these "small rings of stones" in the area as far back as 1937, a detail that places their recognition within the long tradition of field antiquarians working through the Wicklow uplands before systematic survey became standard practice. Whether they served as shelters for those tending livestock on the high ground, as temporary seasonal accommodation, or as something older, remains an open question. The fact that several comparable sites survive in the immediate vicinity suggests this was not a lone outpost but part of a wider pattern of activity on the mountain, traces of a landscape that was once more regularly inhabited or worked than it appears today.