Hut site, Baile An Lochaigh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
Two small stone circles sit joined together in the landscape of Baile An Lochaigh on the Dingle Peninsula, connected by a communicating passage, as though whoever built them wanted the option of moving between spaces without stepping outside.
This kind of conjoined hut arrangement is not common, and the detail of the linking passage, modest as it sounds, suggests a degree of deliberate planning that goes beyond simple shelter.
The northern of the two huts survives only poorly, its walls reduced to a diameter of roughly 2.2 metres and standing no higher than 0.9 metres. These are clochán-type dry-stone structures, circular corbelled or walled enclosures of a kind found widely across the Corca Dhuibhne landscape, the Gaelic name for the broader peninsula. The site sits about 100 metres west of a related monument, placing it within a wider scatter of early settlement remains in a region that has long rewarded close, slow attention. The Dingle Peninsula holds one of the densest concentrations of early medieval and prehistoric field monuments in Ireland, and sites like this one, small and easily missed, form part of that broader pattern of habitation rather than standing apart from it.