House - indeterminate date

The National Monuments Service's description

Set into the foot of a slope on the southern side of a small hummock on the commonage at the extreme western end of the island. It overlooks Loughanaphuca immediately to S.

The site consist of a medium-sized dwelling, roughly D- shaped in plan (6.5m WSW–ENE, 3.7m SSE–NNW) and in fair condition. It is fairly well defined by traces of a delimiting wall of stones. Along the flat, straight, south-south-eastern side a clear external wall face can be traced for 2.9m towards the west- ern end before curving around to also define the west-south-western side before petering out at the north-north-western (upslope) side. It is composed of a line of large stones and slabs, the latter set on edge (L 0.6m max.). These stones appear to be not contiguous but slightly gapped, possibly an effect of their protruding through the grassy sward. The max. height of any of these stones is 0.25m. The eastern end of the house is more poorly defined by a scatter of large stones and slabs, some of which occupy the eastern end of the interior and others of which appear to extend beyond the line of the house at the south-eastern corner (downslope). These include at least one earthfast boulder at N and a short, possible line of facing stones at NNE. No trace of any definite entrance feature is visible, although there may be the hint of a gap at the south-eastern corner at the eastern end of the south-south-east wall. The interior slopes from N to S, and, apart from some small stones lying flush with the sod, it is smooth.

The above description is derived from: New Survey of Clare Island. Volume 5: Archaeology. Edited by Paul Gosling, Conleth Manning and John Waddell. (Royal Irish Academy, Dublin. 2007). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated.

Date of upload: 29 November 2018

References

Gosling, P., Manning, C. and Waddell, J. (eds.) 2007 New Survey of Clare Island, Volume 5: Archaeology. Dublin, Royal Irish Academy.