Hut site, Baile An Fheirtéaraigh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the north-eastern slopes of Croaghmarhin, in rough wet pasture outside Ballyferriter on the Dingle Peninsula, a low ring of collapsed stone barely breaks the surface of the ground.
What remains of this subcircular hut measures roughly 6.5 by 8.3 metres across and stands no higher than 0.8 metres at its tallest point. Inside the tumbled walling, there is a possible stone-lined hearth, the kind of feature that suggests the structure was once genuinely inhabited rather than used for storage or enclosure.
The Dingle Peninsula, known in Irish as Corca Dhuibhne, is one of the more archaeologically dense stretches of the Irish Atlantic coast, where early medieval and prehistoric remains sit close together in the landscape. A hut site of this kind, a simple dwelling with dry-stone walls built into or against the hillside, would not have been unusual here across many centuries of settlement. The site was recorded by J. Cuppage as part of the Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey published in 1986, a systematic effort to catalogue the enormous number of field monuments scattered across the peninsula. The collapsed state of the walls and the absence of any surviving roof structure make precise dating difficult without excavation, and no period has been firmly assigned to this particular example.