Hut site, Na Gleannta Thuaidh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the boggy pastureland of Na Gleannta Thuaidh, in the north of the Dingle Peninsula, a small stone structure sits quietly repurposed.
It was built originally as a corbelled drystone hut, a type of construction in which flat stones are laid in overlapping courses, each ring projecting inward slightly over the last until the whole thing closes into a domed roof without mortar or timber. At some point, the building was given a second life as a sheep-fold, a conversion that speaks to the practical economy of rural Kerry, where ancient stonework rarely goes to waste.
The structure is modest in its dimensions: roughly three metres across, about 1.2 metres tall, with walls approximately 1.4 metres thick. That wall thickness is typical of corbelled construction, where mass and careful placement do the structural work that mortar would otherwise perform. Directly to the south lie the much lower and less distinct remains of a second circular structure, around four metres in diameter but surviving to only 0.2 metres in height, its original form now largely lost to time and the encroaching bog. J. Cuppage documented both structures in the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, a detailed regional survey that catalogued the remarkable density of ancient remains across this part of west Kerry.