Hut site, Raheens, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Raheens, Co. Kerry

On the south-western slopes of Caunoge, in the Raheens area of the Iveragh Peninsula, a small stone structure sits quietly modified by centuries of practical use.

What was once a clochán, a type of corbelled drystone hut in which each course of stone projects slightly inward until the walls meet overhead without the need for mortar or timber, has at some point been repurposed as a sheepfold. That shift from human shelter to animal enclosure is a quietly common fate for these buildings, but it does not make the structure any less worth attention.

The hut is circular, with a diameter of 4.3 metres, walls standing to 1.5 metres in height, and a wall thickness of 1.5 metres. A coursed entrance faces north-north-west, and there is a possible wall-niche in the interior on the northern side. There is considerable stone collapse both inside and around the exterior, concentrated particularly at the north. The structure appears in A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan's archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula, published by Cork University Press in 1996, which catalogued the remarkable density of early and medieval remains across this part of South Kerry. Clocháns of this kind are associated in the popular imagination with early Christian monasticism, though many on the Iveragh Peninsula predate or exist outside that context entirely, serving simply as shelter in upland landscapes where timber was scarce and stone was everywhere.

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