Hut site, Tullycommon, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Settlement Sites
Inside the stone enclosure known as Cashlaungarr, in Tullycommon in County Clare, there are hut sites that have been slowly disappearing from the landscape for well over a century.
A cashel is a type of early medieval stone-walled enclosure, typically circular, and this one once contained at least four internal structures. The most notable of these was positioned in the very centre, directly opposite the eastern gateway, and was described as a cloghaun, a small dry-stone corbelled hut of a kind associated with early Christian and early medieval settlement in Ireland.
The antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westropp recorded the site in detail in 1896, noting the central cloghaun and three further hut sites clustered in the northern quadrant of the enclosure. He also produced a drawing of the cashel that captured the layout of these internal features. When he returned to the subject in 1915, however, he observed that the hut sites had become hardly distinguishable, suggesting that collapse, vegetation, or stone robbing had already begun to obscure them. By the time the site was inspected on the ground in 1999, none of the hut sites could be discerned at all. What Westropp drew and described now exists mainly on paper.
