Hut site, Keadeen, Co. Wicklow

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Keadeen, Co. Wicklow

On the slopes of Keadeen Mountain in County Wicklow, a small oval depression ringed by a low, overgrown stone wall marks one of eight prehistoric hut sites clustered together in a landscape that has changed remarkably little since people last lived in it.

The hut itself is modest in scale, roughly four metres across at its widest, with walls about a metre thick built in the manner typical of dry-stone construction, two facing courses of stone packed around a rubble core. A single upright slab on the south side of what appears to be an entrance at the east-southeast is the kind of detail that rewards a slow walk around the perimeter; it sits transversely to the wall, probably once forming part of a simple threshold.

This site does not stand alone. It belongs to a group of ten associated monuments, all recorded together, that includes a large prehistoric enclosure roughly 106 metres to the northeast and a standing stone. The combination, a substantial enclosure, a marker stone, and multiple small habitation sites, suggests this was once an organised upland settlement rather than a stray or isolated structure. The site is referenced in Christiaan Corlett's 2004 survey work covering pages 80 to 90, which brought systematic attention to this concentration of remains on Keadeen. Precisely who built the huts, and when within the broad sweep of prehistory, is not firmly established, but the architectural form, small, sub-circular, stone-walled shelters, is a type found across upland Ireland and is generally associated with seasonal or permanent habitation from the Bronze Age onward.

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Pete F
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