Over 600 House Platforms Identified at Ireland's Brusselstown Ring, Making It the Largest Prehistoric Settlement in Britain or Ireland
Queen's University Belfast researchers have identified more than 600 suspected house platforms at a Bronze Age hillfort in County Wicklow, proposing it as Ireland's earliest proto-town, two millennia before the Vikings.
Overview
A study published in the journal Antiquity has identified more than 600 suspected prehistoric house platforms within the Brusselstown Ring hillfort in County Wicklow, Ireland, according to Phys.org. The finding makes it the largest nucleated settlement yet documented anywhere in prehistoric Britain or Ireland, and researchers at Queen’s University Belfast have proposed the site as the island’s earliest proto-town, predating Viking urban settlements by roughly two thousand years.
What We Know
Brusselstown Ring sits within the Baltinglass hillfort cluster, a landscape of up to 13 large hilltop enclosures in the Wicklow mountains south of Dublin. The cluster shows nearly continuous activity from the Early Neolithic through the Bronze Age, spanning approximately 3700 to 800 BC, as reported by the Irish Times.
The site itself covers 41.9 hectares and is defined by two widely spaced circular ramparts on neighboring hilltops. Terrestrial surveys carried out over the past decade had already detected 288 potential hut sites, but aerial surveys conducted in 2017 and 2022 revealed more than 600 topographical anomalies consistent with prehistoric house platforms, according to Phys.org. Of these, 98 lie within the inner enclosure and another 509 are situated between the inner and outer ramparts.
Radiocarbon dating places the main occupation during the Late Bronze Age, between approximately 1210 and 780 BC, with evidence of continued use or re-use of some house platforms into the Early Iron Age, around 750 to 400 BC, according to the Irish Times.
The research was led by Dr. Dirk Brandherm of Queen’s University Belfast. In a statement reported by the Irish Times, Dr. Brandherm said the discoveries “challenge previous conceptions of prehistoric settlement organisation, showing a level of social complexity, community cohesion, and regional importance not fully recognised before.”
Water Infrastructure and Excavation Findings
Four test excavation trenches revealed cobbled floors, hearth features with stake holes, pit features, and sparse artifact assemblages including lithics and burnt clay, as reported by Interesting Engineering. Perhaps most notably, archaeologists uncovered a boat-shaped stone-lined structure that may have functioned as a water cistern, with a stream flowing into its interior from a rocky outcrop uphill.
If confirmed, this would represent the first water cistern identified in any Irish hillfort, according to Phys.org. Such a feature, previously documented only in parts of continental Europe, would indicate considerable planning to support a large population on a hilltop site.
Excavation data showed houses of varying sizes, with diameters ranging from roughly 6 to 12 meters, occupied simultaneously. Notably, the artifact assemblages showed no size-related variation, suggesting an absence of marked social hierarchy within the settlement, as reported by Interesting Engineering.
What We Don’t Know
Several questions remain unanswered. While more than 600 topographical anomalies have been identified, not all of them have been confirmed as house platforms through excavation. Even if a fraction ultimately prove to be dwellings, the settlement would still dwarf any other known prehistoric site in the region. The next-largest comparable sites, Turlough Hill and Mullaghfarna, contain roughly 140 and 150 houses respectively, and neither is enclosed by ramparts.
The reasons for the settlement’s apparent abandonment around the third century BC are also unclear. Researchers noted the decline follows broader regional patterns but found no current evidence linking it to climate change.
The Baltinglass hillfort cluster itself remains only partially investigated. Why such an extraordinary concentration of hillforts, described as unparalleled anywhere in Ireland, Britain, or Europe, emerged in this particular part of Wicklow is a question that future research will need to address.
Significance
The scale of the Brusselstown Ring settlement has implications beyond Irish prehistory. The study suggests that proto-urban development in Northern Europe may have occurred nearly 500 years earlier than traditionally recognized, according to Phys.org. Where typical prehistoric Irish settlements consist of one to five dwellings, Brusselstown Ring points to a level of communal organization and population density that had previously been associated only with much later periods.
The research won the Prehistoric Society’s James Dyer Prize for 2025.