What is recorded here

One oval Bronze Age house in County Cork measured 6.9 metres across, had five internal post-holes, a south-south-east entrance and a small porch, and it belonged to a group of three similar homes discovered before the N8 Rathcormac-Fermoy Bypass was built. People may have stood in that porch at dusk, listened for others in the neighbouring houses and moved through a narrow entrance into a room small enough for every voice to return. The road now passes where their ordinaries lived, but the shape of the house still preserves the size of a whole world.

This is one of a group of three houses (see CO044-0730009-, CO044-073-010-) which was excavated in 2003 in advance of the construction of the N8 Rathcormac-Fermoy Bypass. This oval house (diam. 6.9m E-W; 5.5m N-S) comprised a slot-trench and five internal post-holes. Tree-root disturbance may have destroyed another internal post-hole and a portion of the slot-trench whose full extent could not be established. Another post-hole may have held a supporting post for the outer wall. The entrance, which was marked by two substantial post-holes, faced SSE. An elongated porch-like structure extended (L c. 0.7m) from the entrance to the SSE for a distance of c. 0.7m. This porch comprised two trenches that terminated in two further post-holes. Inside the entrance two smaller post-holes may have been part of a further, internal, elaboration of the entrance. Though differing in some aspects, this house was, according to the excavator, broadly similar and contemporaneous with the other two houses, one of which (CO044-073009-) was dated to the Bronze Age (Cotter 2006c 15). (Cotter 2006a, 34-5; 2006c) The above description is derived from 'The Archaeological Inventory of County Cork. Volume 5' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2009). Date of upload: 22 December 2009

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