Hut site, Cathair Samháin, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On a west-facing slope above Lough Currane in south Kerry, two rough stone structures sit quietly at the edge of a levelled terrace, their walls long since collapsed to low ridges in the grass.
What makes this spot particularly curious is not the hut foundations themselves, substantial as they are at nearly eight metres across, but a second, oval enclosure a short distance away that contains three shallow stone-lined depressions arranged in a neat line. Their purpose, as far as anyone can determine, remains entirely unexplained.
The site sits about a hundred metres south-west of Cahersavane caher, a caher being a stone-walled ringfort of the kind found widely across the Iveragh Peninsula, and the two features were almost certainly connected in some way, perhaps as ancillary structures serving the larger enclosure. The terrace on which they stand has been reinforced with rough stone revetment along its western and northern edges, suggesting deliberate effort to create a stable platform on the sloping ground. The circular structure has walls still standing to around a metre in height and roughly 1.6 metres thick, the kind of construction typical of early medieval settlement in this part of Munster. The oval enclosure is lower and more ruinous, its walls reduced to about 0.6 metres, and it measures just over ten metres by six. It is the interior of this second structure that puzzles: three scooped, stone-lined hollows, each roughly 1.2 metres in diameter, arranged in a line. Storage pits, ritual features, drainage sumps, or something else entirely, no firm interpretation has been settled on.
Lough Currane stretches out to the south-west below, and the whole arrangement of terrace, revetment, and paired structures reads as a small, carefully organised settlement in a landscape dense with early medieval remains. The three mysterious depressions are easy to overlook from a distance; they are only legible at close range, once you are already standing inside the ruined oval walls.