Hut site, Drombohilly, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Settlement Sites

Hut site, Drombohilly, Co. Kerry

On a rocky, west-facing slope in the rough hill pasture of Drombohilly, there is a small rectangular enclosure that most walkers would pass without a second glance.

It measures roughly 6.6 metres north to south and 5 metres east to west, about the footprint of a modest garden shed, and yet the careful engineering of its construction suggests someone once considered this an entirely reasonable place to live, or at least to shelter for long stretches at a time.

The structure is defined on its western, northern, and eastern sides by an earth and stone bank, still standing close to a metre high and around 65 centimetres wide. The southern side is formed by a scarp, a cut edge where the ground steps down, which here reaches a depth of 85 centimetres into the upslope. That detail is telling: whoever built this deliberately dug the southern portion of the interior into the hillside, using the slope itself as both insulation and back wall, a technique common in upland settings where the ground provides shelter that timber or loose stone alone cannot. Running around the outside of the western, northern, and part of the eastern sides is a fosse-like depression, a shallow external ditch roughly 2.6 metres wide and 35 centimetres deep. Whether this served a drainage function, a modest defensive one, or simply reflects the spoil-clearance from construction is not certain.

No date has been firmly assigned to this site, and without excavation it is difficult to say whether it belongs to the early medieval period, when temporary upland huts were common features of transhumance farming, or to some later episode of hill use. What survives is a legible geometry in the grass and stone, a ridge-side room that has held its shape long after whoever used it is forgotten.

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Pete F
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