Hut site, Baile An Bhúlaeraigh Theas, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Baile An Bhúlaeraigh Theas, Co. Kerry

On the north-western slopes of Knockmoylebeg, on the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry, a small cluster of stone structures sits scattered across a roughly hundred-metre stretch of hillside.

What makes the group quietly arresting is not its scale but its particularity: two ruined huts survive alongside several sheep-pens, and together they sketch the outline of a working life conducted at some remove from any settlement centre.

The better-preserved of the two huts is a circular foundation, just over three metres in diameter and still standing to a height of around 1.2 metres, with walls between 0.8 and 1.35 metres thick. It retains a lintelled entrance, meaning the doorway is topped by a single flat stone laid horizontally across the uprights, and inside there is a wall-cupboard, a small recess built directly into the stonework. A sheep-pen abuts its western side, suggesting the hut and its enclosures functioned together as a coherent unit, probably used during seasonal grazing on the upland. The second hut is larger and irregularly oval in plan, measuring roughly 4.38 by 3.3 metres and reaching 1.8 metres in height, but it shows considerable evidence of later rebuilding, its fabric altered and added to over time in ways that complicate any straightforward reading of its original form. Structures of this kind are generally associated with booley farming, the Irish practice of moving livestock to higher ground during summer months, with herdsmen or family members following and sheltering in temporary accommodation on the hill. The presence of multiple sheep-pens alongside the huts fits that pattern well. The complex was recorded and described as part of J. Cuppage's 1986 archaeological survey of the Corca Dhuibhne region, a thorough catalogue of the Dingle Peninsula's field monuments that remains a key reference for the area.

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