Hut site, Erneen, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Erneen, Co. Kerry

On the south-facing slopes of Barrerneen in County Kerry, a low oval outline in the rough hill pasture marks the ghost of a small dwelling.

The structure is modest almost to the point of invisibility: an oval hut site measuring roughly 4.2 metres north to south and 2.8 metres east to west, its defining wall now grassed over and standing no more than 0.2 metres above the ground. What survives is little more than a thickened seam in the hillside, best read between the south and north-east arcs of the oval, where the wall retains something of its original course at around 0.65 metres thick. A break in the north-east side of the wall marks where the entrance once was.

Hut sites of this kind are found across the uplands of south-west Kerry and are generally associated with seasonal or marginal land use, possibly dating from the early medieval period or later, when communities grazed cattle on higher ground during summer months in a practice known as booleying. The position here, on a level break partway up a south-facing slope, is typical of that pattern: sheltered enough to be practical, elevated enough to oversee grazing land. What makes this particular spot quietly interesting is the density of remains around it. A second hut site adjoins this one to the south-east, suggesting that whatever activity took place here was not entirely solitary, and a relict field boundary survives in the immediate vicinity, hinting at a small, organised agricultural landscape that has otherwise retreated entirely beneath the grass.

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Pete F
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