Hut site, Gearha, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Gearha, Co. Kerry

On the Iveragh Peninsula in south Kerry, a pair of circular stone huts sit tucked into the north-eastern corner of an enclosing bank, small enough that a person standing inside one could almost touch both walls at once.

The better-preserved of the two measures just 3.4 metres across internally, its walls surviving as a low stony bank reinforced with large boulders, still standing roughly 0.6 metres high after however many centuries of weather and neglect. A narrow entrance gap, less than a metre wide, opens to the north-west, which is a typical orientation for early Irish hut sites, offering some shelter from the prevailing south-westerly winds.

Alongside the two huts, the site contains what may be a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber commonly associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland, used variously for storage, refuge, or both. Together, these features suggest a small enclosed farmstead, the kind of modest rural settlement that once dotted the Kerry uplands in considerable numbers. The site was recorded and described as part of the archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan, published by Cork University Press in 1996, a volume that remains one of the most thorough regional surveys of its kind in the country.

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