Hut site, Baile An Fheirtéaraigh, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Baile An Fheirtéaraigh, Co. Kerry

On the north-western slopes of Croaghmarhin, above the village of Baile An Fheirtéaraigh on the Dingle Peninsula, a ruined cashel sits in a state of near-total reabsorption into the hillside.

A cashel is a stone-walled enclosure, broadly equivalent to a ringfort but built entirely in dry-stone rather than earthen banks, and this one holds within its remains the traces of two small huts. One of them is circular in plan and measures roughly 1.8 metres across internally, barely wide enough to lie down in. Its walls have subsided so completely that the stones barely break the ground surface, and it is not even certain whether what is visible represents the full thickness of the wall or only its inner face peering out.

The site was recorded as part of the Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, published in 1986 under the authorship of J. Cuppage. The surrounding area, known in Irish as Corca Dhuibhne, is exceptionally dense with early medieval and prehistoric remains, and small stone enclosures of this kind were likely associated with farming, seasonal habitation, or monastic activity during the early Christian period. The ambiguity about the wall construction is telling: centuries of collapse and vegetation growth have blurred the distinction between deliberate stonework and the slow drift of rubble, leaving a structure that is more archaeological puzzle than ruin.

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