Hut site, Derrygarriv, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Derrygarriv, Co. Kerry

On the north-facing slopes of Knockeirka in County Kerry, a small oval outline in the heather marks the remains of a structure that was once, in some form, a home.

The site is modest in scale, measuring roughly 3.5 metres north to south and 2 metres east to west, and what survives is a collapsed drystone wall, the kind built without mortar, relying entirely on the careful placement of stone against stone. It sits in a sheltered hollow amid rough pasture, the landscape doing some of the work that walls might otherwise do.

The builders worked with what the ground offered. At the north-east, a natural outcrop of rock was incorporated directly into the wall, reducing labour and anchoring the structure to the hillside itself. The interior was levelled by a combination of methods: the southern end was built up, while the northern end was cut back into the slope, a practical solution to the gradient that speaks to a certain economy of effort. A gap in the wall at the south-west is likely the original entrance. Around fifteen metres to the east, a second hut site survives, suggesting this was not a solitary dwelling but part of a small cluster of occupation, however temporary or seasonal that occupation may have been. Whether these structures date to the early medieval period or earlier is not recorded, but such upland hut sites in Kerry are often associated with transhumance, the seasonal movement of people and livestock to summer pastures, a practice known in Irish as booleying that shaped the use of marginal upland ground for centuries.

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Pete F
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