Hut site, Coomnakilla, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Coomnakilla, Co. Kerry

On the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, there is a place recorded on old maps that no longer exists in any visible form.

A sheepfold once stood on a gently west-sloping stretch of pasture at Coomnakilla, marked clearly on the second edition of the Ordnance Survey map, but nothing of it can be seen on the ground today. What remains is essentially a cartographic ghost, a structure that survived long enough to be recorded by surveyors and then disappeared without leaving a trace.

The second edition of the OS map for this part of Kerry was produced in the latter half of the nineteenth century, a period when the Ordnance Survey was engaged in systematically documenting the Irish landscape in considerable detail, including agricultural structures that might easily have been overlooked. Sheepfolds of this kind were typically dry-stone enclosures used to pen sheep for shearing, dosing, or shelter, and were common features of upland and marginal farming in Kerry. The fact that this one was recorded at all suggests it was sufficiently substantial at the time to warrant inclusion. Whatever the cause of its disappearance, whether gradual collapse, deliberate clearance, or simple absorption back into the surrounding pasture, it has left the land unmarked.

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Pete F
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