They are modest things, barely ankle-height in places, but their arrangement on such a dramatically constrained piece of ground raises immediate questions about who built them, and why here.

The three structures are prehistoric hut sites, recorded and described by Michael Connolly in his 2008 PhD thesis on the prehistoric settlement of the Lee Valley near Tralee. Each hut has been built into the slope, with the downhill, eastern side heavily buttressed by stones piled against the gradient to keep the foundations level on what is otherwise very awkward terrain. Two of the huts are circular; the northernmost has an internal diameter of 2.4 metres, its wall surviving to about 42 centimetres in height and 70 centimetres in width. The middle hut is the smallest of the three, with an internal diameter of just 2 metres and walls slightly lower again. The southernmost example breaks the pattern, being sub-rectangular rather than circular, measuring 4.8 metres north to south and 2.4 metres east to west, though it was built in broadly the same way as its neighbours. In none of the three is there any surviving evidence of an entrance, which is not unusual for foundations reduced to this condition. The walls show no clear coursing, suggesting rough rather than sophisticated construction. The choice of location is itself informative: the glen's sides block views to the east and west almost entirely, but the hut group commands clear lines of sight northward and southward along the glen, and down toward the river. Whether that visibility was a practical consideration or something else entirely is not recorded.