Hut site, Tinnahally, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Tinnahally, Co. Kerry

Inside a ringfort at Tinnahally in County Kerry, tucked into the southern half of the enclosure, a small rectangular platform sits quietly within the earthwork that once surrounded an entire farmstead.

What makes it worth a second look is the layering: this is a structure within a structure, a domestic footprint preserved inside what was already a defended space.

The platform measures roughly six metres north to south and eight metres east to west, edged by a low earthen bank about two and a half metres wide. The bank rises only about twenty centimetres above the interior ground level, though it stands considerably higher on the outer face, at around sixty-five centimetres. A central entrance gap, just over two metres wide, opens to the north. Ringforts, which were typically circular or oval enclosures of raised earthen banks, served as the primary settlement type across early medieval Ireland, housing a farming family and sometimes their livestock. The hut site here represents the kind of internal subdivision that occasionally appears within such enclosures, where a separate defined space was created for a dwelling or ancillary use within the broader protected area. The rectangular form, rather than the round shape more commonly associated with early medieval structures, adds a small note of interest to an otherwise understated feature.

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Pete F
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