Hut site, Carrigawannia, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On a north-east-facing slope in the Kerry hills, a small oval outline in the ground marks what was once a dwelling.
Heather and ferns have done much of the work of obscuring it, and surface stones scattered across the rough pasture make it easy to walk past without registering what you are looking at. But look closer and the logic of it becomes apparent: a collapsed drystone wall, the kind built without mortar by stacking and fitting stone against stone, tracing an oval roughly 3.9 metres east to west and 2.5 metres north to south. The base course still shows its larger stones, and a narrow entrance gap, just 0.6 metres wide, opens to the north.
This is not an isolated structure. Two further hut sites sit within about thirty metres to the north-west and west, suggesting that whatever activity once took place here, it was organised across a small cluster rather than a single lonely shelter. Some forty metres to the south-east there is also evidence of an enclosure, though it has sunk entirely below the visible surface and leaves no readable trace at ground level. Structures of this kind are found across upland Ireland and are variously interpreted as seasonal shelters connected to transhumance, the old practice of moving livestock to higher pastures in summer, or as the remains of more permanent marginal settlement. Without excavation, the precise date and function of the Carrigawannia huts remain open questions.
The site sits in rough hill pasture and is partially obscured by vegetation, so picking out the wall line requires some patience. The entrance gap on the northern side is the clearest single feature, and from there the curve of the collapsed wall can be traced around both sides of the oval. The two neighbouring hut sites, close enough to visit in the same pass across the hillside, give a better sense of the grouping than any one structure alone.