Hut site, Coomacullen, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Coomacullen, Co. Kerry

In the moorland above the Roughty River valley in County Kerry, a small stone structure sits half-swallowed by gorse, its D-shaped outline barely distinguishable from the undulating ground around it.

That shape is what makes it quietly interesting: one side curves in a rough arc of dry stone walling, while the other is simply a section of an older field boundary, pressed into service as a ready-made wall. The whole interior measures just 2.3 metres across its longest axis, which gives some sense of how modest a shelter this was.

The hut sits within a wider landscape of relict field walls, the kind of low, overgrown boundaries that indicate a farming presence now long abandoned. These networks are common across upland Kerry, the physical remnants of smallholding communities that once worked marginal ground before depopulation, whether through famine, emigration, or simple economic retreat, rendered them unviable. The builders of this particular hut seem to have worked pragmatically, incorporating an existing linear field wall as the straight south-eastern side of the structure rather than constructing it from scratch. The curving stone wall that completes the enclosure is only around 0.6 metres thick and 0.4 metres high where it survives, and loose stones scattered both inside and outside suggest further collapse over time. Without excavation, it is difficult to say precisely when it was built or what purpose it served beyond basic shelter, possibly seasonal, possibly for a person tending animals on the upper ground.

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Pete F
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