Hut site, Baile An Lochaigh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the northern slopes of Com an Lochaigh, on the Dingle Peninsula, two small drystone huts sit roughly eight metres apart in rough, rocky terrain.
What makes them quietly arresting is not their scale, which is modest, but their detail. The eastern hut is circular and stands two metres high, with walls over a metre thick built in a slightly corbelled style, meaning the courses of stone are laid so that each projects inward a little over the one below, gradually closing the roof without mortar. Tucked into one wall is a recess that may once have served as a wall-cupboard, or may be a window that was later blocked up. The western hut is smaller and oval, measuring roughly 2.5 by 2.3 metres internally, and it too has a small wall-cupboard built into the stonework.
Huts of this kind are scattered across the Kerry uplands, associated variously with early Christian hermits, seasonal pastoral farming, or the booley tradition of moving livestock to higher ground in summer. The particular combination here, two structures in close proximity with domestic features like built-in cupboards, suggests a functional rather than purely devotional purpose, though the two were not always mutually exclusive on this peninsula. The site was documented by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, a detailed field study of the area's dense concentration of early remains. The measurements recorded then give a precise sense of how compact these structures are: the eastern hut at 3.7 metres in diameter is large enough to shelter a person or two, little more.