Hut site, Carrig, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Carrig, Co. Kerry

On a west-facing slope south of Moll's Gap in County Kerry, a small D-shaped structure sits half-buried in rough hill pasture, its drystone walls protruding just enough above the surface of the bog to betray what was once a sheltered domestic space.

The remains measure only 3.1 metres east to west, with a straight western wall running 3.6 metres in length and standing to a modest 0.35 metres in height. Rubble survives both inside and along the perimeter, and the western side is the best preserved, its linear profile still readable against the surrounding ground. A second hut site lies roughly 3 metres to the south-east, suggesting this was never a solitary dwelling but part of something more organised.

The hut sits within a network of relict field boundaries, the ghostly outlines of an agricultural landscape that was once managed and inhabited. Drystone construction, which uses no mortar and relies entirely on the careful placement of stone, was common across upland Ireland for millennia, used for everything from field walls to small shelters and temporary seasonal dwellings. The association here with old field systems points to a community that worked this hillside over an extended period, dividing and tending land that is now given over to rough pasture and bog. Without excavation it is difficult to assign a precise date, but such hut sites in Kerry are often associated with early medieval or prehistoric occupation, when upland areas were more extensively farmed than they are today.

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Pete F
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