Hut site, Duagh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On a north-facing hillside in County Kerry, almost swallowed by rough fern and grazing land, there sits the remnant of a circular stone hut so small that a person could cross its interior in a single stride.
The structure measures just one and a half metres in diameter, its drystone wall, built without mortar by stacking and fitting stones together, now mostly collapsed to a height of roughly forty centimetres along the southern arc, which is the section best preserved. What makes it quietly compelling is the care taken by whoever built it to work with the slope rather than against it: the interior floor was raised on the northern side and cut into the bank on the southern side, so that the living surface inside remained level despite the hillside's natural angle.
The hut sits on the southern side of an east-west terrace, and from that position it looks out northward toward the mouth of Tralee Bay. A second hut site lies approximately ten metres to the north-east, suggesting that this was not simply an isolated shelter but part of a small cluster of occupation on this hillslope. Huts of this type, modest single-cell stone structures, appear widely across the upland landscapes of Kerry and are generally associated with seasonal or pastoral activity, though pinning down an exact date or function without excavation is difficult. The collapsed wall retains a thickness of around sixty centimetres, substantial enough to suggest it once stood considerably higher than its current remains imply.