Hut site, Aughils, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
Out in the rough bogland of Aughils in County Kerry, a small rectangle of drystone walling sits quietly in the landscape, close to a mountain stream.
It measures only two and a half metres by one and a half, barely large enough to shelter a person, and the question of what it actually was remains open. It may have been a hut; it may equally have been an animal pen. That ambiguity is part of what makes it interesting.
What is certain is that it does not stand alone. The structure is one of at least six similar features clustered in the same area, and it sits conjoined to another possible hut site immediately to its north. Drystone construction, in which stones are laid without mortar and rely on careful placement and weight for stability, was the standard building method for small field structures and temporary shelters across upland Ireland for centuries, and the technique leaves little in the way of dating evidence. Whether these six features represent seasonal settlement, agricultural enclosures, or something else altogether is difficult to say with confidence. Complexes like this are not uncommon on the margins of bogland, where communities once worked ground that has long since been abandoned to the peat.