Hut site, Carrig Island, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Carrig Island, Co. Kerry

On Carrig Island in County Kerry, a cluster of ancient foundations sits in the middle of low-lying pastureland, invisible to anyone consulting an Ordnance Survey map.

The site does not announce itself. There are no interpretive signs marking the spot, no obvious earthworks rising above the surrounding fields, and yet aerial photographs taken in 1987 revealed it quite clearly from above, the outlines of house-sites and other structures traced in the grass in a way that ground-level observation simply cannot show.

The remains belong to a large early ecclesiastical site, the kind of monastic or proto-monastic settlement that was common in early medieval Ireland, where communities of monks or clergy would establish enclosed settlements comprising not just a church but ancillary buildings for living, storage, and craft. What is unusual here is the relationship between the enclosure's interior and the surrounding land: rather than sitting elevated within a raised ringwork, the interior is at roughly the same level as the ground outside, which partly explains why it reads so poorly on foot and so legibly from the air. C. Toal's North Kerry Archaeological Survey, published in 1995, recorded the site and noted the foundations of multiple structures within it, suggesting a settlement of some complexity rather than a lone hermitage or simple burial ground.

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Pete F
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