Hut site, Bunbinnia, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On a south-east-facing slope above Lough Reagh in County Kerry, the ground has been carefully worked to accommodate a very small oval building.
The hut at Bunbinnia measures roughly 3.7 metres north to south and 2.2 metres east to west, barely the size of a modest garden shed, and whoever built it went to considerable trouble to level the floor on an awkward hillside. The northern interior is cut some 0.3 metres into the upslope, while the southern edge is raised 0.25 metres to compensate, creating a usable flat surface on ground that would otherwise tilt sharply away. The walls, built in drystone construction, meaning without mortar, relying entirely on the careful placement of stone against stone, have since collapsed to a height of around 0.6 metres, and rubble has spilled outward and downslope to the south-east. The single entrance, just 0.55 metres wide, faces east.
What makes this site quietly interesting is less the hut itself than its immediate surroundings. A standing stone sits roughly two metres to the north-east, and a second hut site lies about 36 metres to the west-north-west, suggesting this was not an isolated shelter but part of a small cluster of activity on this rough hill pasture. The relationship between the hut sites and the standing stone is not recorded, but the proximity is unlikely to be coincidental. Sites like this are notoriously difficult to date without excavation, and no date is recorded here, but oval drystone huts of this kind are found throughout Kerry and are associated with a range of periods and uses, from early medieval settlement to post-medieval seasonal grazing practices known in Ireland as booleying.