Hut site, Tulaigh Fhialáin, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the southern slopes of Collybeg, not far from the Inny river on the Iveragh Peninsula, two small stone huts sit side by side in the forestry, largely forgotten beneath the trees.
What makes them worth attention is how they were built. Both are corbelled, meaning their walls were constructed by gradually overlapping courses of dry stone inward until they closed into a beehive-like dome, with no mortar and no cut timber. It is one of the oldest building techniques in Ireland, and on a wet Kerry hillside it turns out to be remarkably durable.
The larger of the two huts measures four metres across and still stands two metres high, with walls nearly a metre and a half thick. Its east-facing entrance passage leads into an interior where two lintelled niches are set into the inner wall-face, small recessed compartments that may have served for storage or some more particular purpose that is now difficult to determine. Trees have rooted themselves inside it, their growth slowly working against the stonework. The smaller hut abuts the south side of the larger, reaching only 2.7 metres in diameter and surviving to less than a metre in height. Two upright slabs flank its inner wall, and the floor is now buried under moss-covered stone collapse. Old field walls run through the surrounding area, suggesting this was once part of a working agricultural landscape rather than an isolated structure, though when that landscape was last in use remains unclear.