Hut site, Cill Urlaí, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Cill Urlaí, Co. Kerry

Some sites survive only in correspondence.

At Cill Urlaí in County Kerry, what may once have been a circular hut site is now known chiefly through a single letter written in the summer of 1939. There is nothing left to see on the ground; whatever structure once stood here has long since vanished, leaving only a reference in old paper as evidence that it existed at all.

The letter in question was sent on 20 June 1939 by a Capt. D. B. O'Connell to H. G. Leask, then Inspector of National Monuments. O'Connell described a circular hut site located within a calluragh in the townland of Killurly. A calluragh, also known as a cillín, is an unconsecrated burial ground traditionally used for the interment of unbaptised children, and they are found throughout Ireland, often occupying marginal or liminal ground. This one appears to have been in use as such a site. O'Connell also noted that a gallaun, a single standing stone, faced the possible hut site. Standing stones of this kind are common in the Kerry landscape and were erected across a broad sweep of prehistory, though their precise purposes remain contested. Whether the hut site, the standing stone, and the burial ground were connected in any meaningful way is impossible to say now. No physical trace of the hut itself has been recorded since O'Connell's time, and formal survey work has confirmed that no visible remains survive.

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