Hut site, Baile Uí Uaithnín, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Baile Uí Uaithnín, Co. Kerry

On a level terrace above the Lough Adoon valley in County Kerry, the remains of a small corbelled hut sit largely buried under their own collapsed stonework.

What makes it quietly arresting is the building technique: corbelling involves laying successive courses of drystone so that each projects slightly inward over the one below, eventually closing the roof without mortar or timber. The result is a self-supporting stone shell, a method used on the Dingle Peninsula for centuries, from early medieval clocháns to later shelters used by farmers and herders working the uplands.

This particular hut is oval in plan, measuring at least 2.3 metres by 1.8 metres internally, with walls still standing to 1.57 metres and roughly 1.2 metres thick. Those are substantial proportions for a structure of this kind, suggesting it was built to last rather than serve as a temporary windbreak. It sits on the eastern side of the Lough Adoon valley, on ground level enough to have made it practical. The site was recorded as part of J. Cuppage's 1986 archaeological survey of the Corca Dhuibhne region, a systematic effort to document the remarkable density of prehistoric and early historic remains across the Dingle Peninsula, one of the most archaeologically layered landscapes in Ireland. The hut is now infilled with stone collapse, so much of what was once its interior is obscured, and its precise date remains uncertain.

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