Hut site, Crossderry, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Crossderry, Co. Kerry

On a east-facing slope above the Cummeraloodery stream in south-west Kerry, a small rectangular outline in the rough hill pasture marks where someone once built a home, or at least a shelter.

The structure measures just 2.5 metres east to west and 2 metres north to south, its walls now reduced to their lower courses, with rubble from the collapsed upper sections spilled especially thickly along the outside of the east and south faces. A narrow entrance, only half a metre wide, sits at the centre of the east wall, oriented to catch the morning light and turned away from the prevailing Atlantic weather.

What survives is a drystone hut, a type of structure built without mortar, relying entirely on the careful placement of stones for its stability. The walls, where they stand, are 0.6 metres thick and reach 0.6 metres in height. Two large boulders have been worked directly into the west wall, presumably because moving them was less practical than incorporating them. Along the interior base of the walls, upright stone slabs are set at intervals, a detail that suggests some deliberate organisation of the interior space, perhaps for drainage, lining, or the footing of wooden fittings. Roughly 40 metres to the south-east, a second hut site occupies the same valley slope, indicating this was not an isolated presence in the landscape but part of a small cluster of occupation.

Sites like this one are difficult to date without excavation, and no date has been established here. They could belong to any number of periods when seasonal or permanent settlement pushed into marginal upland ground. The valley setting, the proximity of a stream, and the paired arrangement of the two structures are all details worth pausing over, even if the stones themselves offer no easy answers.

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Pete F
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