Hut site, Coomshanna, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Coomshanna, Co. Kerry

On the north-facing slopes of Been Hill in County Kerry, a small circular stone wall emerges from the surface of a bog, partly smothered in moss, partly swallowed by the roots and debris of a surrounding coniferous wood.

The structure is modest almost to the point of invisibility: roughly two metres in diameter, its collapsed wall surviving to a height of around sixty centimetres and a thickness of eighty centimetres, tracing an arc from south to north-east. The interior is level but obscured by fallen wood, and trees have taken root both within it and around it. What remains is barely legible as a building at all, which is part of what makes it so quietly compelling.

This is the southernmost of three hut sites arranged on a rough north-to-south axis at Coomshanna, the other two sitting close by, with one recorded just a metre to the north. Hut sites of this kind, small circular or oval stone structures typically associated with seasonal or temporary occupation, appear across the Irish landscape in considerable numbers, though their precise dating and function can be difficult to establish without excavation. The boggy, wooded setting here adds an extra layer of obscurity. Blanket bog is a slow, patient archivist; it preserves what falls into it and gradually buries what remains above. That this arc of stone still protrudes above the peat at all is a small accident of survival.

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Pete F
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