Hut site, Baile An Lochaigh, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Baile An Lochaigh, Co. Kerry

On the lower northern slopes of Com an Lochaigh, at the point where two old field walls meet, a small circular foundation sits quietly in the landscape.

It is a modest thing by any measure, roughly constructed, just 3.8 metres across and surviving to a height of around 0.8 metres, with walls approximately 0.75 metres thick. Yet that junction of boundaries is significant. Hut sites like this one tend to cluster where earlier land divisions were already established, suggesting that whoever built here was working within, or perhaps around, a pre-existing pattern of land use rather than starting from scratch.

A scatter of stones pressing against the south-eastern side of the structure may represent the remains of a second building, which would make this a small cluster rather than a solitary dwelling. The Dingle Peninsula, Corca Dhuibhne in Irish, has an unusually dense concentration of early remains, from promontory forts and clochán settlements to ogham stones and souterrains, the latter being underground stone-lined passages associated with early medieval farmsteads. This hut site was recorded as part of a comprehensive archaeological survey of the peninsula published in 1986 by J. Cuppage, a volume that remains a key reference for the area's early material culture.

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