Hut site, An Baile Breac, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Settlement Sites

Hut site, An Baile Breac, Co. Kerry

Two small stone huts on the lower western slopes of the Brandon mountain range have been quietly absorbed into a field wall, their ancient geometry now folded into the working landscape of rough pastureland at An Baile Breac.

That blending is part of what makes them easy to miss: what looks at first like an ordinary boundary feature turns out to contain the remains of circular corbelled structures old enough to predate any clear record of who built them or why.

The site consists of a pair of conjoined circular huts, with a third lying about fifteen metres to the south-west. Corbelled drystone construction, the technique of laying flat stones in overlapping rings so that each course projects inward until the walls close overhead without mortar or timber, was used widely in early medieval Ireland for both sacred and domestic buildings, and the Dingle Peninsula has a notable concentration of such structures. The larger of the two paired huts measures between 4.4 and 4.9 metres in diameter with walls still standing to 1.6 metres; the smaller is 2.9 metres across and survives to 1.8 metres, retaining a wall niche and a lintelled passage at its south-east side that once connected it to its neighbour. A separate entrance faces north-west. The third hut, sitting apart from the pair, has lost its western wall entirely and survives only as the eastern arc of its original circuit, standing to just over a metre. These dimensions were recorded in J. Cuppage's 1986 archaeological survey of the Corca Dhuibhne area, the foundational study of the Dingle Peninsula's remarkable prehistoric and early historic remains.

The site sits in rough pastureland, so the ground underfoot is uneven and the structures themselves blend into the surrounding drystone field boundaries. The wall niche in the smaller hut is worth looking for closely; such recesses are thought to have served a functional or possibly ritual purpose, though their precise use in domestic hut contexts remains uncertain.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Hut site, An Baile Breac, Co. Kerry. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement