Hut site, Derrygarriv, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the north-facing slopes of Knockeirka in south-west Kerry, a circle of collapsed stones sits in a hollow among the heather, barely distinguishable from the rough pasture around it.
It measures just 1.8 metres across, a diameter so modest it rules out almost every domestic or agricultural function we might casually assign to it. What it represents is a hut site, the skeletal remains of a small circular structure whose drystone wall, built without mortar by laying stones carefully against one another, has long since tumbled in on itself.
The wall survives to a height of roughly 0.4 metres and a thickness of 0.6 metres, protruding just enough above the surface of the surrounding bog to mark the outline of what was once a complete enclosure. Loose stones lie scattered both inside and outside that circuit, suggesting the structure has been disturbed over time, whether by weather, by grazing animals, or simply by centuries of slow collapse. Bog has crept up around it, preserving the form even as it obscures the detail. The site sits in a natural hollow, which would have offered some shelter from the prevailing conditions on this exposed northern slope, and that positioning hints at a degree of deliberate choice by whoever built and used it, though nothing in the surviving remains pins down when that was or for what precise purpose.