Hut site, Inchee, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
What survives at Inchee is barely there at all: a shallow arc of stone, one or two courses high, curving out of the ground beside a small tributary of the Finglas river in County Kerry.
It is the western sector of what was once a circular hut, roughly 4.1 metres in diameter, and only that fragment remains. There is something quietly affecting about a structure reduced to so little, a partial ring in the grass that asks you to complete the circle in your imagination.
The site sits about 60 metres east of a caher, which is a type of stone-walled ringfort, a form of enclosed settlement common across early medieval Ireland. That proximity is unlikely to be coincidental. Hut sites like this one were often associated with larger enclosures, serving as shelters, workshops, or outbuildings for the people who lived and worked within or around the main fort. The Finglas river tributary running just to the north would have made this a practical spot, offering water close at hand. The details here come from the archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan, published by Cork University Press in 1996, a systematic effort to document the extraordinary density of early remains across this part of south Kerry.