Hut site, Com Dhíneol Thuaidh, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Com Dhíneol Thuaidh, Co. Kerry

On a steep south-facing mountain slope in the townland of Com Dhíneol Thuaidh on the Dingle Peninsula, there is a small stone structure that raises more questions than it answers.

It is not a church, not a souterrain, not quite a clochán. It is simply recorded as a hut site, and yet its construction suggests something more deliberate than a shepherd's shelter thrown together in a hurry.

The foundations are oval, built in drystone, a technique requiring no mortar, relying instead on the careful stacking and interlocking of dry stones. At the south-west end there is an entrance gap, and directly opposite it, a second entrance leads into an inner chamber. That inner space is lintelled, meaning flat stones were laid across upright supports to form a low roof, and it is partly hewn from the bedrock itself and partly built up with drystone walling. The chamber measures roughly 1.6 by 1.4 metres and stands about a metre high, while the outer structure is approximately 2.5 by 1.6 metres, with walls surviving to around 1.5 metres. The combination of rock-cut and built elements is unusual and points to some care in the original construction. The structure was catalogued by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Dingle Peninsula Archaeological Survey, a landmark regional survey of the Corca Dhuibhne area, though the date at which it was built, and by whom and for what purpose, remains unrecorded.

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