Hut site, Fustane, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Fustane, Co. Kerry

On the southern slope of Mangerton Mountain in County Kerry, a small oval outline barely distinguishable from the surrounding bogland marks the footprint of a structure that once sheltered someone on a working hillside.

The remains measure roughly five metres from north to south and just under two and a half metres across, defined by a collapsed drystone wall, a technique of dry-laid stone construction without mortar, whose grass-covered stones now protrude only about twenty centimetres above the surface of the bog. It is the kind of site that asks more questions than it answers.

The hut sits in rough hill pasture, the sort of terrain historically associated with seasonal grazing practices, where people and animals moved up to higher ground during summer months, a tradition known across Ireland as booleying. Whether this particular structure served that purpose, or belonged to some other pattern of upland use entirely, the physical evidence alone cannot say. What it does preserve is a ground plan, the oval shape and the wall thickness of around sixty centimetres suggesting a modest but deliberate construction rather than a casual shelter. A second hut site lies approximately five metres to the south, which implies that whatever activity took place here, it was not entirely solitary.

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Pete F
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