Hut site, Cill Urlaí, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
In the south-west corner of a steeply sloping field in Cill Urlaí, on the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, the ground holds what is left of two small stone structures so thoroughly collapsed that their outlines are more suggested than stated.
The larger of the two is oval, measuring roughly 3.9 metres by 2.3 metres, with walls surviving to only about 0.6 metres in height and a north-facing entrance less than a metre wide. Stone collapse fills the interior and presses against the outer wall-face. Immediately to its south sits a roughly circular mound of jumbled stone, around 4.3 metres across, with protruding slabs at its centre and along its southern edge. The whole quadrant of the field is strewn with loose stone and the remnants of old field walls, giving the impression of a landscape that has been slowly folding back into itself for a very long time.
What makes the site quietly complicated is the uncertainty layered around it. A 1937 Office of Public Works report by an inspector named O'Malley recorded what he called a graves site in this general area, but placed it one field to the north, a discrepancy that has never been fully resolved. The site may also correspond to a square hut sketched near Coolaconan by a researcher named Lynch in 1902, though the rough construction and collapsed state of what survives makes confident identification difficult. Whether the second mound of stone is a second hut, a field clearance heap, or something else entirely remains an open question. The accumulation of old walls and scattered stone around it suggests this corner of the field was busy with human activity at some point, even if the precise nature and date of that activity have blurred beyond easy reading.