Hut site, Killoe, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Killoe, Co. Kerry

On the south-eastern slopes of Bentee in Co. Kerry, two small stone huts sit conjoined on a slight rise in rough pasture, their circular outlines still legible beneath the overgrowth.

What makes them quietly remarkable is their construction: corbelled drystone, a technique in which courses of flat stones are laid so that each row projects slightly inward over the one below, eventually closing to form a roof without mortar or timber. The Irish term for this type of structure is clochán, and examples survive in various states across the Kerry landscape, but this pair, linked together and retaining a basal row of thin slabs along their inner faces, represents a particular intimacy of design.

The southern hut measures roughly five metres by four metres internally and has its own entrance, about 1.3 metres wide, facing east. An upright stone set into its northern wall marks what was most likely the passage connecting it to the second hut, which lies immediately adjacent and measures approximately 4.8 metres by 3.7 metres. The two were clearly conceived as a unit rather than built at separate times. About twenty metres to the north-east stands a caher, a type of stone-walled enclosure that would have defined a farmstead or small settlement in early medieval Ireland. The proximity of the huts to that enclosure suggests they functioned as part of the same broader occupation of this hillside, perhaps as sleeping quarters, storage, or sheltered workspace associated with seasonal or permanent habitation on the Iveragh Peninsula.

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Pete F
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