Hut site, Baile An Bhúlaeraigh Thuaidh, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Baile An Bhúlaeraigh Thuaidh, Co. Kerry

In a stretch of rough rocky pasture in the townland of Baile An Bhúlaeraigh Thuaidh, on the Dingle Peninsula, a small circular structure sits low against the land, close enough to the ground that it might be passed off as a natural feature of the limestone-scattered hillside.

It is a corbelled drystone hut, the kind of beehive-shaped shelter built without mortar, where flat stones are laid in overlapping rings that gradually tighten inward until they meet at a single closing slab at the apex. This one measures just 3.25 metres in diameter, stands 1.35 metres high, and has walls roughly 1.2 metres thick, which gives it a solidity quite out of proportion to its modest interior space.

The Dingle Peninsula has a remarkable density of these structures, known in Irish as clocháin, and they survive here in part because the building tradition is ancient and the local stone lends itself so well to the technique. The hut was documented by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey, a systematic study of the peninsula's extraordinary concentration of early monuments. Whether this particular example dates to the early medieval period, when such huts were associated with monastic settlement and solitary hermitage, or represents a much later vernacular use of the same building method, the notes do not say. What is clear is that the site has not been entirely abandoned: two rough sheep-pens, described as flimsy, have been built nearby at some point, borrowing the same drystone logic for a considerably less permanent purpose.

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Pete F
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