Hut site, Derrynafeana, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the western slopes of Slievanore in south-west Kerry, barely visible above the surface of the bog, the lower courses of an oval stone wall mark out a space just three metres long and less than two metres wide.
That is all that remains of a hut site at Derrynafeana, a structure so modest in scale that it reads less as a ruin than as an interruption in the landscape, a place where the ground simply refuses to lie flat.
The hut is oval in plan, its surviving wall half a metre thick and only about thirty-five centimetres proud of the bog surface, which has slowly consumed it over the centuries. It sits within a field system, and a field wall butts directly against its western side, suggesting this was not an isolated dwelling but part of a organised agricultural arrangement on the hillside. A second hut site adjoins it immediately to the east, which together point to a small cluster of habitation rather than a single wayward structure. The area around them is rough heather and gorse-covered grazing, the kind of terrain that has changed relatively little since the land was last actively worked, and the views north-west over Lough Acoose give some sense of why people might have chosen this particular shelf of hillside. The site is recorded by O'Sullivan and Sheehan in their 1996 survey of the region, though no date for the hut's construction or use has been established from the available evidence.
The bog that now half-buries the wall is in some ways its best protector. Blanket bog preserves what soil and weather would otherwise dissolve, and what looks like near-total disappearance is often, in these conditions, survival of a quieter kind.