Hut site, Mangerton, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Mangerton, Co. Kerry

On the southern slope of Mangerton Mountain in County Kerry, a circle of tumbled stone sits so low in the heather that it is easy to walk past without registering what it is.

What looks at first glance like a natural scatter of rocks is in fact the collapsed drystone wall of a circular hut, just 2.6 metres across, its interior still gently tilting southward despite whoever built it having deliberately raised the uphill side to level the floor against the hillslope. That small act of practical engineering, carried out by hands unknown and at a date unrecorded, is what makes the structure quietly legible as a human place rather than a geological accident.

The hut occupies rough hill pasture above the valley of the Owbeg River, a position that would have offered a clear view down the slope while providing some shelter from the prevailing weather. The wall survives to only about 30 centimetres in height, with a thickness of around 60 centimetres, and loose stones are scattered on the ground to the exterior on the downhill side, shed there as the structure slowly subsided. Drystone hut sites of this kind, built without mortar, were used across Ireland over a very long span of time, for purposes ranging from seasonal pastoral shelter to more permanent habitation. What is particularly notable here is that this structure is not isolated. A second hut site adjoins it immediately to the north-west, and a pair of conjoined huts sits roughly 24 metres to the south-west, suggesting that what survives on this hillside is a fragment of a small settlement or working cluster rather than a solitary outlier. The group as a whole implies a degree of organised activity on this part of Mangerton Mountain, even if the period and purpose remain unresolved.

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Pete F
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