Hut site, Treangarriv, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On a hillside in Treangarriv, on the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, a small circular structure sits partially buried in its own collapse.
It is easy to miss, and that is rather the point. Scarped into the slope on a slight ledge, the foundations of this corbelled drystone hut survive quietly, the kind of thing that rewards a careful eye rather than a casual glance. A corbelled structure is one built without mortar, where stones are laid in gradually overlapping courses to form a self-supporting roof or wall, a technique used across Ireland from prehistory well into the early medieval period. This particular hut measures just 2.4 metres internally, a space barely large enough for one person to lie down, with walls surviving to a maximum height of 0.4 metres and roughly 0.9 metres thick.
The entrance, just 0.75 metres wide, still has its southern portal stone in place. Two larger stones lying nearby to the east are thought to be the northern portal and the lintel, displaced but not far travelled. The hut's interior is filled with stone collapse, the slow result of centuries of gravity and weather working on the upper courses of the wall. The structure is recorded in the archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan, published by Cork University Press in 1996, which catalogued hundreds of sites across this part of south Kerry. Structures like this one appear throughout the peninsula, sometimes associated with booley settlements used during seasonal cattle grazing, sometimes with early Christian hermitage activity, though the specific function of this particular hut is not documented.