Hut site, Derrygreenia, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Derrygreenia, Co. Kerry

On the north-facing slope of Knocknaveacal in south-west Kerry, a small rectangular structure sits half-swallowed by ferns.

It measures just 4.4 metres north to south and 2 metres east to west, barely large enough to shelter one or two people, and yet its western wall preserves something unusual: rather than the rubble drystone construction used on the other three sides, it is formed from two parallel rows of upright stone slabs, set on end and placed end to end, standing to a height of 1.1 metres. The entrance, just half a metre wide, opens through this same western wall. It is the kind of detail that suggests deliberate craft, a distinction made between one wall and the others for reasons that are no longer obvious.

The remaining walls survive only in their lower courses, with rubble from their collapsed upper sections scattered across the interior, and the whole is set in rough hill pasture on a natural break in the slope. Drystone construction, in which stones are laid without mortar and rely on their own weight and careful placement for stability, was used across Ireland for centuries in structures ranging from field walls to dwellings, and this hut sits within a broader landscape that includes an enclosure immediately to the south. What relationship the hut bore to that enclosure, whether it was a seasonal shelter for a herder, a storage structure, or something else entirely, is not recorded. The site has not been precisely dated, and the ferns that obscure it offer no further clues.

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Pete F
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