Hut site, Ballybrack, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Ballybrack, Co. Kerry

Two ancient hut foundations on the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry share an unusual characteristic: their doorways face inward, towards the centre of the enclosure rather than outward to the wider landscape.

That deliberate orientation, combined with the presence of openings to a possible souterrain discovered within the interior of each hut, gives the site a quietly purposeful quality that ordinary domestic ruins rarely possess.

The remains, located in the southern half of the enclosure, consist of the foundations of two circular stone structures. One measures 6.7 metres in diameter, a modest but workable size for an early medieval dwelling or working space. A souterrain, to explain the term briefly, is an underground stone-lined passage or chamber, typically associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland and thought to have served for storage, refuge, or both. The fact that each hut contained its own opening to what may be a shared or connected souterrain system beneath suggests this was a carefully planned complex rather than a casual accumulation of structures. The site was documented by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan in their 1996 archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula, published by Cork University Press, which remains one of the most thorough inventories of early settlement remains in south Kerry.

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