Hut site, Coumreagh, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Coumreagh, Co. Kerry

At the head of the Bridia valley in County Kerry, tucked into a narrow upland valley on the south-western flank of Broaghnabinnia, the remains of a small rectangular hut sit in a state of near-total collapse.

What was once a shelter is now little more than low mounds of tumbled stone, yet enough survives to read the building's basic form: a structure roughly four metres by two, with walls that were once over a metre thick and still stand, in places, to a height of about thirty-five centimetres. A single upright stone on the northern side marks the eastern edge of an entrance just under a metre wide, a detail that lends the ruin an unexpected legibility.

The dimensions are modest by any measure. A hut of this size, barely the footprint of a garden shed, would have offered basic cover rather than comfortable habitation, and its remote upland setting raises the familiar questions about how such places were used. Seasonal shelters of this type are scattered across the uplands of the Iveragh Peninsula, many associated with transhumance, the practice of moving livestock to higher pastures in summer, though it is not always possible to assign a precise function or date to any individual example without excavation. The Bridia valley itself cuts deep into the Macgillycuddy's Reeks, one of the more sparsely visited corners of an already thinly populated landscape, and the hut's position at the valley head suggests it served whoever worked or grazed the surrounding ground rather than anyone passing through.

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Pete F
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