Hut site, Curragh More, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the Iveragh Peninsula in South Kerry, a small drystone hut sits in the landscape of Curragh More, modest enough that a person of average height could not stand upright inside it.
It measures just 3.7 metres by 2.2 metres, with walls no higher than 1.1 metres and roughly 0.7 metres thick, built without mortar in the drystone tradition, where carefully selected and placed stones hold one another in position through weight and balance alone. Three large boulders form the north-eastern side, suggesting the builders worked with whatever the ground already offered, folding the structure around existing features rather than clearing them away.
The hut is subrectangular in plan, meaning its shape approximates a rectangle without committing fully to one, and its south-facing entrance is a narrow 0.6 metres wide, just enough to pass through. Structures of this kind on the Iveragh Peninsula are generally associated with seasonal or temporary occupation, whether by those tending livestock on upland grazing or by people working the land at some remove from permanent settlement. The surrounding area contains other archaeological features, and this hut sits approximately 50 metres east of a related recorded site, indicating it was not an isolated presence in the landscape but part of a broader pattern of use. The site is documented in the archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan and published by Cork University Press in 1996, a substantial regional survey that catalogued the extraordinary density of surviving ancient structures across South Kerry.