Hut site, Drombohilly, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Drombohilly, Co. Kerry

On a break in a north-west-facing slope in the rough hill pasture of Drombohilly in south-west Kerry, a small rectangular structure sits so quietly in the landscape that it is easy to read it as a natural rise in the ground.

It is not. What survives is a hut site, its low walls of earth and stone still holding their shape beneath a covering of grass, with drystone-facing visible along the outer base where the construction technique peeks through.

The structure is modest in its dimensions, measuring 3.4 metres along its north-west to south-east axis and 1.6 metres across. The walls survive to a height of around 0.3 metres and a thickness of 0.55 metres. A central entrance, just 0.4 metres wide, opens in the north-east wall, and the interior floor sits roughly 0.2 metres higher than the ground outside, a deliberate feature common to small vernacular and early medieval structures that helped keep the interior dry and defensible against pooling water. Drystone construction, in which stones are carefully stacked without mortar, was a widely used building technique across Kerry and the wider Atlantic west of Ireland for centuries, and its traces here suggest the walls were once more substantial than what remains today. An enclosure of some kind lies in the immediate vicinity to the south-east, hinting that this was once part of a small complex rather than an isolated shelter.

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Pete F
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