Hut site, Derrynafinnia, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Derrynafinnia, Co. Kerry

On a south-east-facing slope above the valley of the Clydagh River in County Kerry, four small stone huts sit scattered across rough, heather-clad hill pasture, close enough to suggest a community but spread out enough to raise questions about exactly what that community looked like.

One of them, an oval structure measuring roughly 4.2 metres north to south and 2.2 metres east to west, survives as a ring of collapsed drystone walling, the original wall still traceable at around 0.6 metres thick and 0.7 metres high in places, with rubble spread along the perimeter where it has slumped outward over the centuries. Drystone construction, built without mortar and relying entirely on the careful stacking and interlocking of stones, was the predominant building technique for vernacular and agricultural structures across upland Ireland for millennia, and in a landscape like this one it required nothing more than what lay immediately underfoot.

What gives the site its quiet interest is not any single structure but the grouping. A second hut adjoins this one directly to the east, sharing the same general patch of hillside. Two more lie nearby, one roughly 35 metres to the north-east, another about 60 metres to the south. Whether these were used simultaneously or represent different phases of activity on the same slope is not recorded, but their proximity to the Clydagh River valley below suggests a location chosen with some care, sheltered from the prevailing weather and within reach of water and lower grazing ground. Sites like these tend to attract few visitors and fewer explanatory signs, and the remains are subtle enough that they could easily be passed over as natural tumbles of stone in the heather.

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Pete F
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