Hut site, An Lóthar, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, An Lóthar, Co. Kerry

On a grassy hillside above Ballinskelligs Bay, the low sod-covered foundations of a circular hut sit quietly in pasture, easy to miss unless you already know what you are looking at.

The structure is small, roughly 4.5 metres by 4.3 metres, with walls surviving to about 0.9 metres in height. What distinguishes it, beyond its modest scale, is the precision of its entrance: a pair of upright stones set at the southern side, framing a threshold that has not functioned as a doorway for a very long time.

The site lies on the lower north-western slopes of Farraniaragh, part of the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, a stretch of coastline that holds one of the densest concentrations of early medieval and prehistoric monuments anywhere in Ireland. Circular huts of this kind, sometimes associated with early Christian-period settlement or earlier pastoral activity, are a common enough building type in the archaeological record of Kerry, though most survive only as faint earthworks like this one. A small square annex, a metre wide, abuts the main structure at the south-east, suggesting the hut was not simply a single enclosed space but part of a slightly more considered arrangement, perhaps for storage or the penning of animals.

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Pete F
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