Hut site, Tooreenmore, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Tooreenmore, Co. Kerry

On the northern slopes of Rehill, on the Iveragh Peninsula in south Kerry, a small stone structure sits on a natural terrace cut into rough, boggy pasture.

What makes it quietly notable is its shape: a D-plan hut, its flat wall facing east, with an arched niche built into that same eastern wall. Niches of this kind were often used to hold a lamp, a vessel, or a small devotional object, though their precise function in any individual case is rarely certain. The structure measures roughly 5.3 metres by 4.3 metres across, stands about 1.4 metres high, and has walls approximately a metre thick, suggesting solid dry-stone construction of the kind associated with early medieval activity in the west of Ireland.

The Iveragh Peninsula preserves an unusually dense concentration of early stonework, and hut sites of this general type are understood within a broader tradition of small enclosed dwellings, sometimes associated with monastic or pastoral activity in the early Christian period. This particular example was recorded as part of a comprehensive archaeological survey of south Kerry carried out by Aidan O'Sullivan and Jerry Sheehan, published by Cork University Press in 1996. Nearby, a separate scatter of collapsed walling marks what appears to have been a later animal shelter, a reminder that these upland terraces were worked and reworked across many centuries, each generation leaving its own layer of stone on the hillside.

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Pete F
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