Hut site, Na Gleannta Thuaidh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the south-eastern slopes of Com Amhais, in the uplands of Na Gleannta Thuaidh in north Kerry, two small circular huts sit pressed together like a pair of cupped hands.
What makes them unusual is not simply their age but their construction: both are built in corbelled drystone, a technique in which flat stones are laid in overlapping rings that gradually close inward to form a self-supporting dome, with no mortar and no roof timbers. It is one of the oldest surviving building methods in Ireland, and on the Dingle Peninsula it produced some of the most enduring structures in the country.
The larger of the two huts faces north-west and measures roughly 3.45 metres across and 1.35 metres in height, with walls between 1.45 and 1.6 metres thick. Inside, a small cupboard recess has been formed in the wall at the south-south-west, a quiet domestic detail that suggests the space was used for more than occasional shelter. A lintelled passage, in which a flat stone spans the gap between two upright supports to form a low doorway, connects this hut to the smaller southern one; that passage has partly collapsed. The smaller hut is around 1.6 metres in diameter and 1.2 metres high. Its original exterior entrance on the east side has been blocked up, and the interior is now accessible only through gaps in the semi-collapsed roof. Alongside these two conjoined structures, traces of what may be a third building abut their south-western side. The site was recorded by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, a landmark piece of fieldwork that catalogued the extraordinary density of ancient remains across this part of Kerry.