Hut site, Mangerton, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the south-western slope of Mangerton Mountain in County Kerry, half-buried in heather and rough pasture, sits a circular hut so small and so thoroughly collapsed that most walkers would step over it without a second glance.
It measures just 2.6 metres north to south and 2.4 metres east to west, its walls now reduced to a low ring of fallen drystone, standing only around 0.3 metres high and about half a metre thick. What makes it quietly compelling is a practical detail still readable in the stonework: the southern portion of the interior floor was deliberately raised to level out the natural slope of the hillside, a small act of construction that tells you someone once intended to sleep or work here in reasonable comfort.
The structure is a hut site of the kind found across upland Ireland, built using the drystone technique, which involves stacking stone without mortar, relying entirely on the weight and fit of each piece to hold the wall together. No firm date has been established for this particular example, and hut sites of this form can range from prehistoric to early medieval in origin, or sometimes later, associated with seasonal grazing practices known as transhumance. A possible entrance is visible on the south-eastern side. About 28 metres to the south, a relict field boundary survives in the landscape, a remnant of some former system of land division that once organised this now-open hillside into something more deliberate and worked.