Hut site, Knockaneyouloo, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Settlement Sites

Hut site, Knockaneyouloo, Co. Kerry

On the western slopes of Been Hill on the Iveragh Peninsula, a cluster of ancient hut sites sits quietly in the landscape, the kind of place that registers as little more than a scatter of stones until you begin to read the ground beneath your feet.

One of the group is circular in plan, its walls formed from closely set upright stones rather than the more familiar technique of dry-stone coursing, giving it a distinctly skeletal appearance. A single large upright at the north-west is thought to mark the original entrance, a detail that lends the structure a sense of orientation and intention even after all the centuries it has been standing here.

The hut measures roughly three metres by two, with surviving wall height of about three-quarters of a metre and a wall thickness of around eighty centimetres. These are modest dimensions, consistent with the kind of seasonal or pastoral shelters that were once scattered across upland Kerry, used by those moving livestock to higher grazing ground in summer, a practice known in Ireland as booleying. The archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula, compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan and published by Cork University Press in 1996, recorded this site as part of a broader group on the hillside, suggesting that whatever activity took place here was communal or repeated rather than incidental.

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