Hut site, Cooryeen, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Cooryeen, Co. Kerry

On a south-facing slope in the rough hill pasture above Lough Inchiquin, a small D-shaped outline in the landscape marks what was once a hut site.

It is easy to miss: the collapsed drystone wall that defines it rises only about twenty centimetres above the surrounding bog, and the entire structure measures just two metres across at its widest east-to-west span. What makes it slightly easier to read in the terrain is the straight eastern side, which runs some two and a half metres north to south and was formed not by a purpose-built wall but by a relict field boundary, an older division of land that was simply incorporated into the structure.

Drystone construction, in which stones are laid without mortar and held together by their own weight and careful placement, was the ordinary building method across Kerry for millennia, used for field walls, enclosures, and small shelters alike. The fact that this hut borrowed its eastern wall from an already-existing field boundary suggests a pragmatic, opportunistic approach to building, somebody making use of what was already standing in the landscape. The bog has since grown up around the remains, partly obscuring them, though the wall still protrudes above the surface. No date has been firmly established for the site, and its precise function, whether a seasonal shelter for those working the upland pasture, a more permanent dwelling, or something else entirely, remains uncertain.

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Pete F
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