Field system, Baile An Lochaigh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ritual/Ceremonial
On the steep southern slopes of Com an Lochaigh, in County Kerry, a small circular hut sits tucked into a terrace within the remains of an old field system.
It is easy to overlook the significance of such a structure, but the details repay attention: the walls are corbelled drystone, meaning each course of stone is laid so that it projects slightly inward over the one below, allowing the builders to close off a roof without mortar or timber. The hut measures three metres in diameter and stands two metres high, with walls 1.2 metres thick. Three small niches are set into those walls, and at some point a secondary partition was added internally, dividing the space into two areas.
The site sits within a broader old field system, the kind of landscape feature that can represent centuries of agricultural activity, boundaries laid down and reworked across generations. The Dingle Peninsula, known in Irish as Corca Dhuibhne, is unusually dense with early remains of this sort, a consequence of both its long settlement history and the relative absence of later intensive development that might have obscured or demolished earlier structures. The hut and its surrounding field boundaries were documented by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey, a systematic effort to record the extraordinary concentration of monuments across the peninsula.