Hut site, Cores, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Cores, Co. Kerry

On the western slope of Mangerton Mountain, half-swallowed by heather, sits a small circular structure that most walkers in Killarney National Park would step over without a second thought.

It measures roughly 3.8 metres across at its widest and stands no more than 0.7 metres high, its drystone walls, built without mortar by stacking and fitting stones together dry, still holding their shape at about a metre thick. A narrow entrance, less than a metre wide, faces west. It is the kind of thing that registers, if it registers at all, as a natural feature of the hillside rather than something made by human hands.

What little is recorded about the structure speaks mostly to its physical form rather than its origins or use. Circular stone huts of this kind are found across upland Ireland and can date from anywhere between the early medieval period and the post-medieval centuries, sometimes serving as shelters for those herding cattle to summer pasture, a practice known in Irish as booleying. Whether that was the purpose here is not documented. The site lies in rough hill pasture in a valley on Mangerton's western face, a location that would have offered some shelter from prevailing winds while keeping the entrance oriented towards whatever light and activity lay to the west below. The heather that now covers it has, in a way, preserved it, binding the stones in place while obscuring the structure from casual view.

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Pete F
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