Hut site, Meall Na Mbreac, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On a west-facing slope above the Inny River valley, half-swallowed by bog and obscured by rushes, a small circular structure sits in rough hill grazing on Meall Na Mbreac.
It does not announce itself. The stone wall that defines it protrudes only about half a metre above the bog surface, and the rubble that once filled its interior has scattered, leaving a shape that is easier to read on paper than on the ground.
The structure measures roughly 7.6 metres north to south and 7.5 metres east to west, making it a compact but reasonably substantial circular hut site. Its wall, about a metre thick, was built in a distinctive manner: an inner and outer row of contiguous slabs, meaning stones laid edge to edge, with rubble packed between them. This kind of double-skin construction, using whatever flat stone was available locally, is a technique found across early Irish upland sites, though dating individual examples without excavation is rarely straightforward. What is visible here represents only the degraded base of what was once a more complete structure. Further damage came from a more recent hand: a turf stand, a simple frame used for drying cut peat, was built directly on part of the hut site, breaking up sections of the walling. Field boundaries of probable historic date lie roughly 35 metres to the north-east, suggesting that this part of the hillside saw sustained, if modest, human activity over a long period.