Hut site, Cill Rialaigh, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Cill Rialaigh, Co. Kerry

At Cill Rialaigh on the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, a modest curve of stone wall is almost all that remains of a hut site built directly into a hillside slope.

The surviving northern wall stands just 1.2 metres high, and the structure's possible internal diameter of around 4.1 metres gives a sense of how small and self-contained the original building would have been, barely large enough for a few people and whatever they needed to shelter.

What makes the site quietly interesting is the evidence within that single remaining wall of two distinct phases of construction, suggesting that someone came back to alter or repair it at a later point. The hut sits roughly 8 metres downslope from a related site nearby, hinting at a small cluster of activity on this part of the hillside rather than a solitary dwelling in isolation. A field wall, built at some later date, now runs across the western side of the site, partly burying and obscuring it, which is a common enough fate for early structures in areas that were subsequently farmed and divided up. The survey of the Iveragh Peninsula compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan, published by Cork University Press in 1996, brought together records of sites like this one, where the archaeology is fragmentary but legible enough to sketch an outline of former occupation across the landscape.

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Pete F
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