Hut site, Erneen, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the south-east-facing slopes of Barrerneen in County Kerry, a small oval hollow in the heather is all that remains of a structure once carefully fitted to the hill itself.
The hut site at Erneen measures just three metres east to west and two metres north to south, a space barely large enough for a handful of people to shelter. What makes it quietly remarkable is the care taken to level an otherwise awkward hillside site: the southern portion of the interior floor was built up roughly thirty centimetres, while the northern portion was cut thirty centimetres down into the slope, creating a usable flat surface on ground that would otherwise have tilted uncomfortably. The surrounding wall, built in drystone construction, meaning stones laid without mortar and relying on careful fitting for stability, has long since collapsed to a thickness of about sixty centimetres and a surviving height of half a metre, the whole now smothered in heather.
Sites of this kind appear throughout the upland margins of south-west Kerry, traces of seasonal or permanent occupation by people working rough hill pasture over many centuries. The precise date of this particular structure is not recorded, but the technique of cutting and raising a floor to compensate for slope is a practical response found in vernacular building traditions from the early medieval period onwards. Roughly twelve metres to the north-east lies a related enclosure, suggesting this was not an isolated feature but part of a small cluster of activity on this hillside. Together they hint at a modest working landscape, now returned almost entirely to rough grazing.