Hut site, Baile An Lochaigh, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Settlement Sites

Hut site, Baile An Lochaigh, Co. Kerry

Near the upper reaches of the Feohanagh river in Baile An Lochaigh, on a rare patch of relatively level, rock-free ground, sits a small corbelled drystone hut that has endured largely through the stubbornness of its own construction.

Corbelling is a building technique in which courses of stone are laid so that each projects slightly inward over the one below, eventually meeting at the top without any mortar, keystone, or timber. The result is a self-supporting dome, and on the Dingle Peninsula this method produced structures tough enough to outlast almost everything built around them.

The hut is oval in plan, measuring roughly 3.1 by 2.75 metres across and standing 2 metres high, which makes it a compact but fully enclosed space. Its entrance faces east, a lintelled opening just 65 centimetres wide and 90 centimetres high, meaning anyone entering would have had to stoop considerably. Two lintelled recesses are set into the wall; one of these may originally have served as the entrance to a wall-passage, a narrow internal gallery running within the thickness of the wall itself, a feature found elsewhere on the peninsula in more elaborate early medieval structures. Abutting the hut to the north is a wedge-shaped enclosure measuring 4 metres by between 1.5 and 3 metres, and a second square enclosure of roughly 2 metres lies immediately to its west. The relationship between the hut and these attached spaces suggests the whole complex functioned as a working unit rather than a single isolated shelter. The structure was recorded by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, a landmark inventory that documented the extraordinary density of early remains across this part of Kerry.

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Pete F
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