Hut site, Baile Uí Chorráin, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Baile Uí Chorráin, Co. Kerry

At the edge of the flat boggy plain drained by the lower reaches of the Feohanagh river on the Dingle Peninsula, a cluster of ancient structures sits in a landscape that has changed remarkably little since they were built.

Two conjoined huts, oval to circular in form, share a wall and open onto ground that has been slowly swallowing itself in peat for centuries. Alongside them runs a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage of the kind frequently associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland, used variously for storage, refuge, or ventilation of a dwelling above.

A third possible hut lies to the south-east of the smaller of the two conjoined structures. It differs from its neighbours in shape, being roughly triangular in outline, and measures approximately four metres by four metres internally, a modest footprint suggesting a subsidiary or ancillary function within the wider settlement. The site sits within Baile Uí Chorráin, a townland in the Corca Dhuibhne, or Dingle Peninsula, area of County Kerry, a region so dense with early archaeological remains that survey work carried out in the 1980s filled an entire volume dedicated to the area. The grouping of huts with an associated souterrain is a pattern seen elsewhere in early Irish settlement, where above-ground domestic space and below-ground chambers were used in combination, though the precise date of this particular site is not recorded.

The boggy terrain that frames the site is itself part of the story. The lower Feohanagh river plain is exactly the kind of marginal, poorly drained ground that early communities nonetheless chose to occupy, perhaps for the water access, perhaps for the grazing on adjacent ground. The flatness of the landscape means the low earthwork traces of the huts are visible against the open ground, though the site rewards a slow look rather than a quick glance.

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