Hut site, Coimín An Daingin, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the southern bank of the Ballyheabought river, in the rough mountain pasture of Coimín An Daingin on the Dingle Peninsula, there sits what was once a pair of conjoined huts.
One has fared better than the other. The second, positioned to the south-east, has collapsed over time into little more than a stone-faced mound with a faint depression at its centre, the outline of a former interior still just legible beneath the grass and rubble. It is the kind of site that rewards patient looking; walk past without knowing what you are seeing and it reads as nothing more than a slight irregularity in the hillside.
Conjoined huts of this type, where two roughly circular or oval stone structures share a wall, are found at a number of locations along the Dingle Peninsula and belong to a broader tradition of early settlement in the area. The peninsula preserves an unusually dense concentration of early medieval and prehistoric remains, and the Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey, published in 1986 by J. Cuppage under the auspices of Oidhreacht Chorca Dhuibhne, documented this site alongside more than a thousand others across the region. The collapsed south-eastern hut, its stones still roughly faced despite centuries of exposure, suggests some deliberate construction rather than a casual field shelter, though without excavation it is difficult to assign a precise period or function with confidence.