Hut site, Com Na Heorna Thiar, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
Two small ruined huts sit high on the eastern slopes of Cahernageeha in south Kerry, in the kind of rough wet pasture that discourages casual visitors.
They are easy to overlook on a landscape already crowded with ancient stonework, but the arrangement here is quietly specific: a double row of upright stones tracing the walls of one subcircular structure, a stone-revetted rectangular platform pressed against its southern side, and a second hut about thirty metres to the south-west, slightly larger but otherwise similar in form.
The first hut measures roughly 3.3 metres by 2.8 metres, with walls surviving to around 0.9 metres in height, and what may be an entrance on the western side. The abutting platform, 4.6 metres by 2.4 metres, is an unusual feature; its revetted stonework suggests it was deliberately constructed rather than a natural terrace, though its precise function is unclear. The second hut, at 3.6 metres by 3.2 metres, sits close enough to suggest the two structures were used together, perhaps as seasonal shelters associated with upland farming or transhumance, the old practice of moving livestock to higher ground in summer. Old field walls are still visible nearby, which lends weight to that reading. The site sits at the head of a tributary of the Coomnahorna river valley, a landscape shaped by both geology and generations of agricultural use, most of it now long abandoned.