Hut site, Ardkearagh, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Ardkearagh, Co. Kerry

On the north-western slopes of Trusk Mountain in south-west Kerry, where rough hill pasture gives way to open heather, a small circle of collapsed stone sits quietly in the landscape.

It is easy to walk past without registering what it is: a circular hut site, measuring roughly four metres east to west and just under four metres north to south, its drystone wall long since fallen in on itself. The rubble has spread both inward and outward, so the outline reads more as a low earthen smear than a standing structure, but the form is still legible once you know to look for it.

Drystone construction, which uses no mortar and relies entirely on the careful placing of stone against stone, was the default building method across Ireland for millennia, and hut sites of this kind are found scattered across Kerry's uplands. They are difficult to date precisely without excavation. Some belong to the early medieval period, others may be considerably older, and a few represent seasonal shelters used by people moving livestock to summer grazing, a practice known as booley farming that persisted in parts of Ireland well into the modern era. The walls here, where they survive, still stand to around 0.8 metres, with a thickness of 0.65 metres, suggesting a structure that was once reasonably solid rather than a temporary windbreak. Whether it was a dwelling, a shelter for animals, or something else entirely, the mountain has kept that to itself.

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Pete F
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