Hut site, Derreennageeha, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Derreennageeha, Co. Kerry

In the forestry at the head of the Inny river valley in south Kerry, a small stone structure sits largely unnoticed among the trees, just 1.2 metres tall and barely wide enough for a person to lie down in.

It is a corbelled hut, built from drystone and roofed using the ancient technique of corbelling, where stones are laid in overlapping courses that gradually close inward until the structure becomes self-supporting. No mortar, no timber, no imported material of any kind. The entrance faces south and is marked by two upright stones set just forty-three centimetres apart, a gap that would require anyone entering to turn sideways or crouch.

The hut sits close to a large subcircular enclosure, which suggests it may once have been part of a wider complex of agricultural or pastoral activity, perhaps associated with booleying, the seasonal practice of moving cattle to upland summer pastures and living in temporary shelters while tending them. Corbelled stone huts of this kind are found across the Iveragh Peninsula, the broad finger of land that stretches into the Atlantic and includes the Ring of Kerry. Many are difficult to date with precision, but structures of this type were in use from early medieval times onward, and some were built and rebuilt across many centuries. The measurements here are notably modest even by the standards of the type: 2.2 metres by 1.5 metres internally, with walls roughly 0.8 metres thick.

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Pete F
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