Hut site, Fustane, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Fustane, Co. Kerry

On the southern slope of Mangerton Mountain in County Kerry, a circle of collapsed stones barely rises above the surface of the bog.

It is easy to overlook, but what protrudes here is the remnant of a drystone wall that once formed the perimeter of a small circular hut, roughly five metres across, with a west-facing entrance just wide enough for a person to pass through. Drystone construction, which uses no mortar and relies instead on the careful fitting of stones against one another, was common across many centuries of Irish settlement, from the early medieval period onward. The wall survives to a height of only thirty to forty centimetres along its better-preserved sections, and the eastern arc has largely dissolved into a scatter of loose stones, claimed by the bog over whatever span of time it took for this place to fall out of use.

What makes this site quietly odd is not its isolation but its company. A second hut site sits directly against the southern arc of this one, the two structures effectively sharing a boundary on the hillside. Whether they were in use simultaneously, or whether one was added to the other at a later point, is not recorded. Together they form a small cluster on ground that would have demanded considerable effort to work and to live on, exposed to the weather that rolls across Mangerton and far from any obvious shelter. The bog that now partially swallows the walls was not always so extensive; bogland in Ireland tends to expand over time as drainage patterns shift and organic matter accumulates, and it is likely that this slope looked rather different, and perhaps more hospitable, when these walls were first raised.

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Pete F
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