Hut site, Currach Gráige, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Currach Gráige, Co. Kerry

On the lower slopes of Ballydavid Head in west Kerry, a cluster of collapsed stone heaps sits quietly above Smerwick Harbour, easily passed over as nothing more than field rubble.

Look more carefully, though, and a coherent outline begins to emerge: what appears to be a small cashel, an early Irish stone-walled enclosure typically used for settlement or as a farmstead, with the remains of three hut-sites arranged within its interior.

The site is, by any honest measure, extremely ruined. The enclosing wall is now little more than a low bank of small stones along the western perimeter, with only intermittent stretches of original facing still visible. Inside, the outlines of three hut-sites abut the inner edge of this wall. The largest is circular, with an internal diameter of roughly five metres, which is a modest but not unusual size for an early medieval dwelling of this kind. The other two are less distinct, their forms blurred by centuries of collapse and slippage. The location is telling: the site commands a view over Smerwick Harbour and the flat plain drained by the Feohanagh river, a position that would have made practical sense for whoever once occupied this small enclosure, offering both shelter on the slope and visibility across the surrounding landscape. The site was recorded and described by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey, a detailed inventory of the extraordinary concentration of early monuments found across Corca Dhuibhne.

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Pete F
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