Hut site, Cloichearaí, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Cloichearaí, Co. Kerry

On the western slopes of Slievanea, a mountain on the Dingle Peninsula, a small stone structure sits on a rocky terrace amid the scree as though it has simply always been there.

It is a corbelled drystone hut, which means its walls were built without mortar, each course of stone laid so that it slightly overhangs the one below, gradually closing inward until the roof seals itself. The technique is ancient and found across the west of Ireland, requiring no timber and no imported materials, only patience and an understanding of how stone behaves under its own weight.

This particular example measures roughly 2.86 to 3.28 metres in diameter, stands 2.35 metres high, and has walls 1.21 metres thick. Those dimensions speak to a structure built to last and to insulate, the mass of stone holding out the Atlantic weather on three sides. A few metres to the northwest sits a second, more roughly built roofed structure, interpreted as an outhouse or animal shelter. Together the two buildings suggest a small functional unit, the kind of seasonal or marginal settlement that once dotted these upland slopes, used perhaps for summer grazing or by those living at the edge of more cultivated land below. The site was recorded by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, a meticulous inventory of the extraordinary concentration of early remains found across this part of Kerry.

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