Hut site, An Ghairfeanaigh, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, An Ghairfeanaigh, Co. Kerry

On the eastern slopes of Sugarloaf hill in Kerry, looking out over the lower Garfinny valley and the strand at Trabeg, a circular ringfort encloses what were once two small stone huts arranged in a line from east to west.

Ringforts, the most common type of early medieval settlement monument in Ireland, were typically enclosed farmsteads defined by one or more earthen or stone banks. This one is univallate, meaning it has a single enclosing bank, and what remains of its interior hints at domestic life on the Dingle Peninsula well over a thousand years ago.

The two circular huts sit at the centre of the enclosure, both now reduced to low mounds of grass-grown stone collapse, with only short sections of their original wall-faces still legible at ground level. The eastern hut measures 3.5 metres in diameter, a modest space by any standard, and its inner wall-face survives in two short stretches to a height of just under a metre. Its entrance faces west, and a straight stony bank connects the northern side of its doorway to the northern side of the entrance to the first hut, suggesting a deliberate and organised layout rather than ad hoc construction. The area between the two huts is partly enclosed by low banks to the south, which may represent a third hut or a roughly D-shaped courtyard, the kind of shared working space that would have served the occupants for animals, storage, or daily tasks. The detail was first recorded by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey, a systematic survey of the Corca Dhuibhne region that documented sites across the peninsula in considerable depth.

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