Hut site, An Toileán Buí, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the lower southern slopes of Caunoge, on the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, a rough circular hut sits quietly beside a forestry plantation.
It is a modest structure, measuring just under six metres across, and its construction is described as rough, suggesting dry-stone walling or field-gathered stone rather than any dressed masonry. That plainness is part of what makes it worth attention. Circular huts of this type are among the oldest recurring forms of human shelter in Ireland, built across many different periods from the early medieval era back into prehistory, and their simplicity of form has made precise dating difficult without excavation.
The site sits on An Toileán Buí, a placename that translates roughly from Irish as the yellow island or the yellow land, though in this upland context the name likely refers to the character of the terrain rather than any literal island. The surrounding landscape is typical of the Iveragh interior, a peninsula more often associated with its dramatic coastline but equally defined by its boggy uplands and rough grazing ground. The hut was recorded as part of a comprehensive archaeological survey of South Kerry compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan and published by Cork University Press in 1996, a project that systematically documented hundreds of sites across the peninsula, many of them little visited and lightly documented before that point.