Hut site, Baile An Lochaigh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the lower northern slopes of Com an Lochaigh, a pair of circular stone foundations sit partly absorbed into an old field wall, the kind of detail that can slip past even an attentive eye.
The two huts are conjoined, built from drystone, a technique using carefully selected and fitted stones without any mortar, and one of them, the more easterly of the pair, has no independent entrance of its own. That detail is quietly telling: it could only be reached through its neighbour, suggesting the two structures functioned as a single unit rather than separate dwellings.
The remains are modest in scale. The easterly hut measures roughly 2.1 metres in diameter, with surviving wall height of around 0.8 metres and wall thickness of about a metre, proportions that speak to solidity rather than grandeur. Their recorded description comes from J. Cuppage's 1986 archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, Corca Dhuibhne, a landscape that contains one of the densest concentrations of early field monuments in Ireland. The Dingle Peninsula was inhabited and farmed across many centuries, and small conjoined hut clusters like this one are associated with seasonal or agricultural use as much as permanent settlement. The fact that these foundations have been incorporated into a later field wall suggests the site was reused and reinterpreted long after its original occupants had gone, later farmers finding it practical to fold old stonework into new boundaries rather than clear it away.