Hut site, Treangarriv, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On a sheltered fold of Seefin mountain in County Kerry, overlooking the waters of Caragh Lake, the low remains of a small stone hut sit quietly in the landscape.
It is the kind of structure that rewards attention precisely because it asks for so little of it, a modest outline in the ground that most walkers would pass without a second glance.
The hut is subrectangular in plan, meaning roughly rectangular but with softened, rounded corners rather than sharp angles, a form common to drystone structures built without mortar, where corners are among the most structurally vulnerable points. Its internal dimensions are approximately 6.8 metres by 1.9 metres, making it a long, narrow space, and its surviving walls stand only around 0.65 metres high with a thickness of roughly 1 metre. A single entrance, just 0.65 metres wide, opens to the south. Drystone construction of this kind, where carefully selected and stacked stones do the work of mortar, is found across Kerry in structures of various periods and purposes, from field shelters to more permanent seasonal dwellings associated with transhumance, the practice of moving livestock to upland pastures in summer months. Whether this particular hut served a pastoral, agricultural, or some other function is not recorded.