Hut site, Baile Na Habha, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the lower western slopes of the Brandon Mountain range in County Kerry, a slightly raised oval platform in the earth is all that outwardly marks where a structure once stood.
Measuring roughly 10.9 by 9 metres, the platform is unremarkable at a glance, the kind of subtle earthwork that walkers pass without a second thought. What gives it a different character is what lies just inside its northern edge: the entrance to a souterrain, a concealed underground passage built without mortar, its stones laid dry and fitted tightly together by hand.
Souterrains are found across early medieval Ireland, typically associated with settlement sites, and were used variously for storage, refuge, or both. This one is modest in scale but precise in construction. The passage runs 2.4 metres southward from the entrance, is a metre wide, and rises only 0.45 metres above the earth and stone debris that now covers its floor. Four large capstones form the roof. The hut above it, long since reduced to the platform outline, belonged to the broader landscape of Baile na hAbha on the Dingle Peninsula, a region exceptionally dense with early and medieval remains. The site was recorded as part of the Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey, published in 1986 by J. Cuppage, which catalogued the remarkable concentration of monuments across this stretch of west Kerry.