Hut site, Baile An Bhúlaeraigh Thuaidh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the northern end of the Dingle Peninsula, in the townland of Baile An Bhúlaeraigh Thuaidh, there sits a small stone structure that quietly tells two separate stories at once.
Someone, at some point, built a roughly sub-rectangular enclosure around the remains of what was probably an older circular hut, folding the earlier building into a new one rather than clearing it away. The result is a modest construction, standing about 1.5 metres high with walls around 1.35 metres thick, its interior diameter running somewhere between 3.5 and 4 metres. It is crude rather than careful work, the kind of structure raised by practical need rather than any ambition toward permanence.
The layering of the two phases is what makes this site quietly interesting. Circular huts of the kind that appears to underlie the later structure are a common enough form across the Irish landscape, associated with early medieval and prehistoric settlement patterns. The decision to incorporate rather than demolish suggests either that the earlier walls were still useful as ready-cut stone, or simply that the person building did not see much reason to do otherwise. Close by, four flimsy sheep-pens were also constructed, which sets the whole complex firmly in the context of pastoral farming and seasonal land use, the kind of low-intensity activity that has shaped the Dingle Peninsula for centuries. The site was recorded in J. Cuppage's 1986 archaeological survey of the Corca Dhuibhne area, a landmark study of the peninsula's exceptionally dense concentration of ancient remains.