Hut site, An Coimín, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Settlement Sites

Hut site, An Coimín, Co. Kerry

On the Bull's Head promontory, a broad headland pushing south-west into Dingle Bay, the ground holds the traces of at least fourteen ancient hut-sites spread along the central ridge and down its flanks.

What makes the place quietly arresting is the sheer variety packed into a small area: the structures range in plan from sub-rectangular through oval to circular, and in internal diameter from as little as two metres to as much as six. Some sit independently; several are conjoined, their walls sharing courses of stone in arrangements that suggest a settlement that grew incrementally rather than being laid out all at once.

The huts were built using drystone construction, a technique requiring no mortar, the stones carefully chosen and fitted to hold their own weight. Many of the structures take advantage of what was already there, incorporating sections of outcropping bedrock directly into their walls, so that the boundary between geology and architecture is sometimes difficult to distinguish. The site was documented by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, a systematic effort to record the extraordinary concentration of early remains across this part of west Kerry. That survey remains a foundational reference for understanding how densely settled and worked this landscape once was, even in its most exposed coastal reaches.

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