Hut site, Coill Bhaile Uí Fhlaithimh, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Coill Bhaile Uí Fhlaithimh, Co. Kerry

In a wooded corner of the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry, a cluster of stone hut sites sits arranged in a pattern that suggests not a single dwelling but something closer to a small settlement.

At the centre is a large circular stone hut within a circular compound, a form of enclosed grouping sometimes called a cashel or clochaun settlement, where a defining wall marks out a communal or defended space. What makes this site quietly unusual is the arrangement of subsidiary huts: some are built directly against the inside of the enclosure wall, while others lie entirely outside it, implying that whatever community used this place had spread beyond its original boundaries.

The site sits within an area known in Irish as Coill Bhaile Uí Fhlaithimh, roughly translating as the wood of the townland of the Flahertys, a name that carries its own layer of history. The physical remains were recorded in the 1950 County Kerry Field Club survey, and the site was later catalogued by Judith Cuppage in her 1986 archaeological survey of the Corca Dhuibhne region, the Dingle Peninsula, published under the title that pairs its English and Irish identities. Corca Dhuibhne is one of the most archaeologically dense areas of Ireland, with early medieval and prehistoric remains concentrated across its slopes and headlands, and stone hut clusters of this type are broadly associated with early medieval settlement, though dating individual sites without excavation remains difficult. The combination of a principal hut, an enclosing wall, and outlying structures points to a site that may have evolved over time rather than being built to a single plan.

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