Hut site, Baile An Bhúlaeraigh Theas, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Baile An Bhúlaeraigh Theas, Co. Kerry

On the steep slopes of Knockmoylebeg, in the south Kerry townland known in Irish as Baile An Bhúlaeraigh Theas, a small circular stone structure sits at a place called Neóin-í-áille.

It is not a ruin in the conventional sense, not a collapsed tower or a roofless church, but a corbelled drystone hut, the kind of building raised without mortar, its walls built inward course by course until they meet overhead. This one survives to a height of 1.7 metres, with walls nearly two metres thick and an interior diameter of just 3.25 metres, dimensions that suggest a space barely large enough for a few people to shelter in. What makes the site quietly stranger still is the external plinth built along its downslope side, a practical response to the gradient of the ground, and the faint traces of a second, smaller corbelled structure abutting it.

The hut was recorded as part of the Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey published in 1986 by J. Cuppage, a comprehensive survey of the Dingle Peninsula that drew together centuries of accumulated field evidence from one of the most archaeologically dense landscapes in Ireland. Corbelled structures of this kind are found across the Dingle Peninsula, ranging from early medieval monastic cells to simple shelters of uncertain date, and distinguishing between them without excavation is rarely straightforward. The presence of a second, smaller structure alongside the main hut adds a layer of complexity: it may represent a later addition, a separate functional space, or simply a repair, though the surviving traces are too slight to say with confidence.

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