Seaweed stand

The National Monuments Service's description

FtzPatrick (2007, 11) stated that 'over 200 earthen enclosures dotting the 'ruans' or commons on the cliff line of the headland are not of great antiquity but modern platforms for stacking harvested dry sea wrack. The wrack was stacked in small cocks and remained there until it was carried away and burnt with sea rods to make kelp, or spread on the land as manure. The results of an excavation (01E0700), combined with analysis of aerial photographs, local lore, nineteenth-century estate documents and eighteenth-century travellers' observations, indicate that many of the enclosures are likely to date from the modern period and are primarily related to tenant activity on the estates of Cooper of Markree and Hillas of Donecoy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The harvesting of sea wrack for the iodine market and for local potato and grain crops continued at Aughris on a small scale into the first half of the twentieth century.' The example excavated by E. FitzPatrick in 2001 is located at the following grid reference (ITM): 549055 (easting), 836022 (northing).

FitzPatrick, E., with contributions by Fenwick J. (2007), 'Interpreting a cultural landscape: a case for sea-weed harvesting at Aughris, Co. Sligo' JIA, 11-34.

FitzPatrick, E. (2001) 'The gathering place of Tír Fhiachragh: archaeological and folkloric investigations at Aughris, Co. Sligo' PRIA 101C, 67-105.

Compiled by: Paul Walsh

Date of upload: 19 January 2011