Hut site, Uragh, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Uragh, Co. Kerry

In the rough hill pasture of Uragh, a circular wall of dry-laid stone pushes up through the surface of a bog, marking a space where someone once lived or sheltered.

The structure is modest in scale, measuring roughly 3.4 metres east to west and 3.2 metres north to south, with the collapsed wall still reaching about half a metre in height and not quite that in thickness. What makes it quietly arresting is its position: set within a gap in the hills, close to the edge of a north-east-facing precipice, and immediately west of Lough Napeasta, a name that carries the Irish word for a water monster or serpent.

The hut sits on the western side of a nearby enclosure, its outer wall abutting that boundary as though the two structures were planned or used together. Drystone construction, which uses no mortar and relies instead on the careful placement of interlocking stones, was common across Ireland for centuries, and the technique alone offers little help in pinning down a date. What the bog has done, in slowly engulfing the lower courses of the wall, is preserve the outline of something that might otherwise have vanished entirely into the hillside. The enclosure it adjoins suggests some form of organised land use in this elevated, exposed corner of south-west Kerry, though whether for pastoral farming, seasonal habitation, or something else, the remains do not say.

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Pete F
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