Hut site, An Chlais, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, An Chlais, Co. Kerry

On the north-western flank of a ridge running south-west from Brandon Mountain, there is a small circular structure that has, in effect, been used twice.

The outer shell is an early drystone hut, built without mortar, its walls still standing to two metres in places and measuring nearly two metres thick. Inside, three recesses are set into the wall, the kind of detail that suggests deliberate, considered construction rather than a hasty shepherd's shelter. The entrance, oriented to the north-west and topped with a lintel stone, remains intact. At some later point, long after whoever originally occupied the hut had gone, someone returned and built sheep-shelters both within the interior and against the outer face of the walls, folding a new practical use into the bones of an older one.

The structure was recorded as part of the Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey published by J. Cuppage in 1986 under the title 'Corca Dhuibhne', a comprehensive survey of the antiquities of this part of the Iveragh and Dingle coastlands. The hut sits in open mountain terrain, exposed and unenclosed, with no townland boundary or field system to frame it. Its diameter of 4.2 metres puts it in the range of early medieval or possibly earlier habitation sites found across the western Irish seaboard, where circular drystone construction, sometimes called a clochan, was a practical and long-lived building tradition. The wall recesses are a relatively refined feature for a remote upland site, hinting that this was more than a temporary bothán or seasonal shelter, though the record does not specify a date or attribution with certainty.

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Pete F
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