Hut site, Drombohilly, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Drombohilly, Co. Kerry

On a north-west-facing slope in the rough hill pasture of Drombohilly, a small oval outline breaks the surface of the bog.

It is easy to miss: a collapsed drystone wall, built without mortar in the tradition of dry-stone construction found throughout the uplands of Kerry, rising only about 0.7 metres above the ground, its stones scattered outward around the exterior. What it describes, though, is a human shelter, roughly 4.1 metres along its longer axis and 2.3 metres across, barely large enough for a person to lie down in comfortably. That combination of smallness and solitude is what makes it quietly remarkable.

The structure sits where the slope breaks, a position that would have offered some shelter from the prevailing weather while keeping the ground underfoot drier than the bog proper. Hut sites like this one are generally understood as seasonal shelters, associated with the practice of booley farming, in which cattle and their herders moved to upland grazing during the summer months, a pattern common across Ireland well into the post-medieval period. The bogland that now surrounds and partially consumes the wall has, in its way, preserved the outline rather than erased it, holding the collapsed stones more or less in place. Loose material scattered around the outside suggests the wall was never particularly thick, around 0.6 metres, and was likely a modest structure even when first built.

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Pete F
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