Hut site, Erneen, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Erneen, Co. Kerry

On a saddle of rough hill pasture between two Kerry summits, Knockboy and Knocknamanagh, a small circular structure sits half-swallowed by bog, its drystone walls still just visible above the surface.

The hut measures only three metres in diameter, with walls surviving to a height of around thirty centimetres and a thickness of roughly sixty centimetres, and a narrow north-facing entrance just wide enough for a single person to pass through. That it can be made out at all is partly a matter of luck: the encroaching bog has preserved rather than erased the outline, leaving the wall course protruding like a low rim from the ground.

A hut site of this kind, a simple drystone enclosure built without mortar, is a form found across upland Ireland and is often associated with seasonal pastoral activity, the practice of moving livestock to higher ground in summer months known as transhumance, or with earlier periods of more permanent upland settlement. What makes the Erneen example quietly notable is that it does not stand alone. A second hut site lies approximately ten metres to the north-west, suggesting that this bleak saddle between two hills once supported at least a small cluster of activity rather than a single isolated dwelling or shelter. Together the two structures imply some degree of organisation or repeated use, though the date of either has not been established from the available evidence.

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Pete F
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