Hut site, Dromavally, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Dromavally, Co. Kerry

A circular stone foundation on the Dingle Peninsula carries a name far grander than its modest dimensions might suggest.

Known locally as Leaba agus Uaigh ChĂșchulainn, or Cuchullin's Bed and Grave, this small cluster of rough-stone remains in Dromavally was long associated with the legendary Ulster hero CĂș Chulainn. The site consists of several low enclosures and shelters, most likely built for sheep, with one circular foundation standing out at roughly three metres in diameter and up to a metre high. That foundation may once have been a simple hut site, the kind of seasonal or functional structure that dots the upland landscapes of Kerry.

The legendary attribution has proved persistent and somewhat misleading. Ordnance Survey mapmakers recorded the name, and later writers including William Borlase in 1897 and the authors of the Killanin and Duignan Shell Guide in 1962 interpreted the features as graves and cairns, a reading that the dramatic place name would naturally encourage. A cairn is a mound of stones, often raised over a burial, and the low circular profile of the main foundation could plausibly have suggested one to earlier observers working without excavation. It was only the Dingle Peninsula Archaeological Survey of 1986, compiled by J. Cuppage, that reappraised the remains more soberly, identifying them as functional agricultural structures rather than funerary monuments. The leap from sheep shelter to heroic grave says something about how landscape features acquire names, and how those names then shape what people believe they are looking at for generations.

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