Hut site, Meallis, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Settlement Sites

Hut site, Meallis, Co. Kerry

On a north-facing terrace in the upland pasture of Macgillycuddy's Reeks, a small circular stone structure sits partially collapsed but still legible, its walls curving inward in a way that hints at how it was once roofed.

The hut measures just four metres in diameter, yet the care put into its construction is visible even in its ruined state: the drystone wall, built without mortar, survives to around 1.2 metres in height and reaches 0.75 metres thick. That inward slope of the inner face points towards a corbelled roof, a technique in which stones are laid so that each course projects slightly over the one below, eventually closing the space overhead without the need for timber or thatch. It is a building method with deep roots in Irish prehistoric and early medieval construction, and finding it here, in rough mountain ground, suggests a structure intended to endure.

The entrance, if that is what it is, appears as a gap roughly 0.9 metres wide on the south-east side, oriented away from the prevailing weather off the Reeks. Rubble scattered around the outside of the walls marks where the structure has shed material over time. What makes the site more than a solitary curiosity is its company: a second hut site adjoins it directly to the west, and a third lies around ten metres to the west-north-west. The clustering of these small buildings on a sheltered mountain terrace suggests a planned grouping rather than an isolated shelter, possibly a seasonal settlement where people and animals moved to higher ground during summer months, a practice known in Ireland as booleying. No dates are attached to the Meallis structures, but this type of drystone construction and upland grouping is broadly consistent with early medieval or later prehistoric activity in Kerry's mountainous interior.

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Pete F
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