Hut site, Lomanagh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On a south-east facing slope in the upland pasture of Lomanagh in County Kerry, a cluster of circular stone hut foundations sits quietly in the rough grazing land, largely unnoticed by the wider world.
Between five and seven of these features have been identified, ranging from roughly four to eight metres in diameter, spread across an area of about a quarter of a hectare. A tighter grouping of perhaps four conjoined huts occupies a core area of around a tenth of a hectare, their outlines pressed close together in a way that suggests a small, organised settlement rather than isolated shelters.
These features came to wider attention through aerial and satellite imagery, with the cluster visible on Google Earth photography from June 2010 and on Digital Globe orthoimagery captured between 2011 and 2013. Circular stone huts of this kind are a recurring feature of the Irish upland landscape, typically associated with seasonal or permanent habitation from prehistory through to the early medieval period, though without excavation or more detailed survey it is difficult to assign a firm date to the Lomanagh examples. What makes this particular grouping quietly interesting is the conjoined arrangement of the main cluster, where walls or foundations appear to share edges, pointing to a degree of planning or incremental growth over time rather than casual, scattered use of the hillside.