Hut site, Letter, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Letter, Co. Kerry

On the eastern slope of Beenmore, at an elevation of between 250 and 260 metres, a cluster of ancient hut sites sits quietly in boggy upland pasture now given over to sheep grazing.

What makes this particular spot worth pausing over is the way the complex straddles a small tributary of the Behy river, with two of the huts lying to the north of the stream and the rest to the south. The arrangement suggests a settlement of some scale, spread across a ridge with Coomnacronia Lake lying roughly 625 metres to the south-south-west and a further hut complex visible about 520 metres to the south-west. This was not an isolated shelter but part of a broader pattern of upland habitation.

The individual hut described in detail here is circular, a common form in early Irish settlement, where drystone construction, that is, walls built from stacked stone without mortar, was the standard technique in upland and coastal areas. What survives is a collapsed drystone wall roughly 0.8 metres thick and 0.5 metres high, enclosing an interior space of just two metres in diameter. That is a very small footprint, closer to a temporary refuge or seasonal shelter than a permanent dwelling. The rubble that now fills the interior makes it impossible to identify an entrance, and the structure is described as poorly preserved. To the north lies Drung Hill; to the east, the land falls away through the valley foothills towards Dingle Bay, with Seefin Mountain visible beyond.

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Pete F
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