Hut site, Keadeen, Co. Wicklow
Co. Wicklow |
Settlement Sites
Just below the summit of Keadeen Mountain in County Wicklow, at 2,146 feet above sea level, a low circular wall sits half-buried in heather.
It is easy to walk past without registering what it is: the remains of a hut site, its perimeter traced in drystone, with what appears to be an annexe extending to the north-east. Whoever built it chose the spot deliberately. The views from up here take in a wide sweep of surrounding countryside, and that commanding position was almost certainly part of the point.
The structure is not alone on the mountain. Seventy metres to the north lies a cursus, a type of elongated enclosure defined by parallel banks or ditches, associated in Britain and Ireland with prehistoric ceremonial use, though its precise function remains debated among archaeologists. Two hundred and thirty-five metres to the north-east sits a hilltop cairn, a mound of stones typically raised over a burial or used as a landscape marker. The clustering of these features suggests that Keadeen's upper slopes held some significance across a long span of time, though the exact period of the hut site itself is not recorded. Drystone construction, in which stones are laid without mortar, appears across many centuries of Irish settlement, from the early medieval period back into prehistory, so the wall alone does not fix a date.
The site sits in open upland terrain covered with heather, close to the mountain's summit. Anyone making the climb should expect rough, unmarked ground, and the annexe to the north-east is worth looking for once the main circular outline has been located.