Hut site, Derrynagree, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Settlement Sites

Hut site, Derrynagree, Co. Kerry

In rough boggy pasture south of Eagles Lough on the Iveragh Peninsula, close to a tributary of the Sneem river, three small stone structures sit low in the landscape, their foundations largely intact but easily overlooked against the surrounding scatter of field stone and peat.

What marks the site as quietly unusual is the grouping itself: three separate circular huts, each roughly two metres in diameter, arranged in loose proximity to one another on sloping ground.

Drystone construction, built without mortar and relying instead on the careful stacking and wedging of stone, gives these structures their character. The first, and most complete, is a roughly circular hut measuring approximately 2.2 by 2.1 metres, with a stone-faced platform surviving on its southern side. A short distance downslope to the south, a second structure survives only as a semicircular outline buried beneath a dense spread of collapsed stone, suggesting the walls have largely tumbled in on themselves. Seven metres to the east of that sits the third hut, also circular and of similar scale, though its northern side has been damaged or worn away. The site was documented by archaeologists A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan as part of their survey of the Iveragh Peninsula, published by Cork University Press in 1996. The notes do not assign a precise date to the structures, and that ambiguity is itself telling: small hut sites of this kind on the upland margins of south Kerry could belong to any number of periods, from early medieval pastoral use to post-medieval seasonal grazing activity known as booleying, in which farming communities moved livestock to higher ground in summer and lived temporarily in simple shelters while tending them.

The site sits in working boggy pasture, so access would depend on the condition of the ground and the time of year. The low foundations and dense stone scatter are the main things to look for; without that context, the remains could easily read as natural field clearance rather than deliberate construction.

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