Hut site, Cill Mhic Iarainn Thiar, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Cill Mhic Iarainn Thiar, Co. Kerry

On the south-facing slopes of Beenduff, in the rough hill pasture of Cill Mhic Iarainn Thiar in south-west Kerry, a small oval enclosure sits half-swallowed by the hillside.

It is easy to overlook, being little more than a low ring of drystone walling, the kind of structure that registers as a grassy lump before it registers as anything built. But the details repay attention. The interior floor is not simply flat; it is raised slightly at the southern end and cut into the slope at the north, creating a levelled living surface that required deliberate shaping of the ground. That practical earthworking is often the clearest sign that a structure was genuinely inhabited rather than merely functional.

The hut measures roughly 2.8 metres north to south and 2.3 metres east to west, with the surviving drystone wall, built without mortar, still standing to around 0.9 metres in places and roughly 0.6 metres thick. A narrow entrance, less than a metre wide, faces east. Attached to the southern side is a small annexe, partially roofed with stone slabs on its western side, measuring about 2 metres by 0.9 metres. Drystone huts of this kind are found across the uplands of Kerry and were used at various periods, sometimes as seasonal shelters for those tending livestock on higher ground, sometimes as more permanent small dwellings. The annexe here, low and partly covered, may have served as storage or as a sheltered pen for animals. No precise date has been assigned to the structure, and without excavation the chronology remains open.

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Pete F
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