Hut site, Baile An Lochaigh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the northern slopes of Com an Lochaigh, in the rough rocky terrain of the Dingle Peninsula, two small drystone huts sit just eight metres apart, their low walls still holding their form against the landscape.
What catches the attention is not their size but their domesticity: the western hut, oval in shape and barely two and a half metres across, contains a small wall-cupboard, a detail so ordinary and so human that it quietly reframes what might otherwise read as a ruin into something closer to a home.
Drystone construction, in which stones are fitted together without mortar, is one of the oldest and most durable building techniques in Ireland, and structures of this kind are scattered across the upland and coastal areas of Kerry. The western hut measures roughly 2.5 by 2.3 metres with a surviving height of 1.1 metres. Its companion lies a short distance to the east. Both sit within Baile an Lochaigh, a placename connecting the settlement to the nearby lake hollow, or loch, in the valley below. The site was recorded as part of J. Cuppage's archaeological survey of the Corca Dhuibhne region, published in 1986, which systematically documented the extraordinary concentration of early remains across the Dingle Peninsula.
The wall-cupboard in the western hut is the kind of feature that rarely survives and is easy to overlook when it does. Built into the thickness of a drystone wall, such recesses served as simple shelved storage, keeping small objects off the ground in a space with no floor but the earth. That one remains legible here, in a structure no taller than a person's shoulder, gives the site an unexpected intimacy.