Hut site, Drom Na Coille, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Drom Na Coille, Co. Kerry

In the boggy pasture on the southern side of the Inny river valley in County Kerry, a low scatter of boulders marks the footprint of a dwelling that has been slowly disappearing into the ground for centuries.

The remains are those of a subcircular hut, roughly six metres by five, built from rough, uncoursed boulders and now so overgrown and collapsed that the structure reads more as a slight disturbance in the landscape than anything you would immediately recognise as human-made. Nearby, old field walls have suffered the same fate, their lines softened and broken, suggesting that this was once part of a small agricultural holding rather than an isolated shelter.

Subcircular hut foundations of this kind are found widely across the uplands and margins of the Iveragh Peninsula, and they are notoriously difficult to date without excavation. They may represent seasonal booley settlements, where families and their livestock moved to higher or more remote ground during summer months, or they could be the remnants of more permanent habitation from any number of periods stretching back through the medieval era and beyond. The location here, tucked against a stream on the wet southern slope of the valley, fits a pattern common to marginal farmsteads: water nearby, some shelter from the prevailing weather, and ground that, however boggy now, may once have been workable. The collapsed field walls are particularly telling, since they imply a community of effort, a place where boundaries mattered and land was being actively managed.

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Pete F
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