Hut site, Baurearagh, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Baurearagh, Co. Kerry

On a shoulder of rough hill pasture above the Baurearagh River in south-west Kerry, a small circle of stones marks what was once a dwelling.

It is easy to walk past without registering what it is. The wall has collapsed entirely, and the lower courses are partly swallowed by bog, with grass creeping over the remaining stonework. What survives amounts to a ring roughly 3.1 metres in diameter, the tumbled drystone wall still faintly tracing its original line on the west and south-west sides, with scatter spreading outward to the east.

Drystone hut sites of this kind, built without mortar, are found across upland Kerry and were associated variously with seasonal grazing, early settlement, or agricultural activity, though the precise date and function of any individual example can be difficult to pin down without excavation. This one sits on the crest of the shoulder, a position that would have offered both a view northward over the river and some shelter from prevailing weather. A break in the wall on the south-west to west arc may be the original entrance, a small but telling detail in an otherwise undifferentiated scatter of stone. Fifteen metres to the west stands another hut site, which suggests this was not an isolated structure but part of a small cluster, the two buildings perhaps used together or in close succession by the same community.

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Pete F
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