Hut site, Gortderrig, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Gortderrig, Co. Kerry

On the lower northern slopes of The Paps of Dana, the twin-peaked Kerry hills associated in Irish mythology with the goddess Anu, sits a small circular ruin that has quietly changed its purpose at least once over its lifetime.

It is compact, barely three metres across, built entirely without mortar in the tradition known as drystone construction, and its walls have partly collapsed. What makes it worth pausing over is the layered evidence of reuse: what appears to have begun as a dwelling, a hut site, was at some point adapted into a sheepfold, with the human interior repurposed for livestock.

The structural details tell a careful story. The wall, roughly seventy centimetres thick and surviving to about a metre in height along its western arc, drops to just twenty centimetres at the eastern entrance, which is consistent with the wear and modification that comes with repeated agricultural use. A small opening near the base of the wall on the northwestern side leads into a stone annexe, only about a metre square, its roof made from flat slabs that also help carry the weight of the adjacent hut wall. Along the southeastern side, a fragment of wall projects outward from the main structure in a way that suggests it once served as a funnel to guide sheep inside. There is also a stone-covered depression along the southern arc, accompanied by a low earthen bank, whose original function remains uncertain. About forty metres to the west-southwest, surveyors have recorded the possible remains of a second hut site, which raises the question of whether this was ever a more substantial upland settlement rather than a lone outpost in the rough hill pasture.

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Pete F
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