Field boundary, Baile An Lochaigh, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field boundary, Baile An Lochaigh, Co. Kerry

On the steep, rocky northern slopes of Com an Lochaigh in County Kerry, a small stone structure sits against an old field wall, easy to overlook and easier still to misread.

It is a corbelled drystone hut, just 3.3 metres in diameter and just over two metres high, its walls built without mortar by stacking and angling stones inward until they close at the top, a technique that predates written Irish history by millennia. Two lintelled niches are set into the interior walls, horizontal slabs bridging small recesses in the stonework. The form is ancient; the function, at some point, became entirely practical.

The structure was probably originally circular, which places it within a tradition of corbelled beehive huts found across the Dingle Peninsula, some of them associated with early Christian monastic settlement, others with prehistoric occupation. At some stage, this particular example was modified and pressed into service as a sheep-shelter, its ancient geometry repurposed for the ordinary rhythms of pastoral farming. It abuts the eastern side of a pre-existing field wall, suggesting it was already part of an older agricultural landscape when the modification took place. The site was recorded by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, a landmark study of one of the most archaeologically dense regions in Ireland.

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Pete F
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