Hut site, Baile Uí Bhuinn, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Settlement Sites

Hut site, Baile Uí Bhuinn, Co. Kerry

On the western shore of Brandon Bay in County Kerry, a low rise just 18 metres above sea level holds the quiet remains of what was once a cashel, an enclosed settlement of the early medieval period typically defined by a circular stone wall, containing within it the traces of two or possibly three small stone huts and a souterrain that is no longer accessible.

The site sits roughly 200 metres from Caher Point, close enough to the water that whoever lived here would have had an unobstructed relationship with the bay and the Atlantic beyond it. What makes this particular enclosure unusual is not grandeur but ambiguity: the evidence is fragmentary enough that even the number of structures it once held remains uncertain.

The most legible feature lies in the west-north-western part of the interior, where a band of grass-grown collapse marks the footprint of one hut, with a faint suggestion of a second immediately to its south-west. Within the wall remains of that first hut, the removal of a roofing slab has exposed a short section of drystone-built souterrain passage, an underground tunnel of the kind used in early medieval Ireland for storage or concealment. The exposed section is roughly 0.66 metres wide and infilled almost to its own roof, running north to south and possibly turning westward at its northern end, though this is not certain. A third structure may exist towards the south-east of the enclosure centre, marked by a disturbed, roughly circular spread of stones, but this could equally represent clearance debris rather than a collapsed hut. The ambiguity itself is instructive: it reflects how much early settlement archaeology depends on reading collapse and absence rather than standing fabric. The site was recorded in detail by J. Cuppage as part of the Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey published in 1986, and it carries a preservation order issued in 1984 under the National Monuments Acts.

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