Hut site, Cill Fearnóg, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On a small promontory pushing southward into Dingle Bay, a cluster of four adjoining hut-sites sits tucked against the inner edge of an early promontory fort.
What makes the arrangement quietly unusual is the way the natural landscape was pressed into service: the bank running along the eastern cliff edge does double duty, acting simultaneously as the fort's interior boundary and as the shared back wall of the huts lined up beside it.
The site is recorded under the townland name Monacarroge, from the Irish Móin na Caróige, and was noted as early as 1910 by the antiquarian T. J. Westropp, who referred to it by the name of the adjacent field. A promontory fort is a prehistoric or early medieval enclosure that uses a coastal headland's natural cliff edges as its main defences, with a constructed bank or ditch cutting across the landward approach to complete the circuit. Here, that inner defensive bank became the structural backbone for the four huts, which extend southward from it in a row. Their internal dimensions are modest, ranging from 3.4 by 1.9 metres down to 2.6 by 1.5 metres, suggesting spaces designed for sleeping or sheltering rather than communal living. The enclosing banks themselves are low, averaging between 0.3 and 0.4 metres in height, and the entrance gaps are positioned at one end or the other of the western walls, a consistent detail that hints at deliberate planning rather than ad hoc construction. The arrangement was documented in detail by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey, a thorough catalogue of the Corca Dhuibhne region's extraordinary concentration of early monuments.