Hut site, Feaghmaan, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Feaghmaan, Co. Kerry

On Valentia Island, on the southern side of the broad col connecting the two hills of Kilbeg and Geokaun, a small oval structure sits half-swallowed by the hillside.

Its walls, built without mortar in the drystone tradition, have collapsed and are now softened under a covering of sod, so that the whole thing reads more as a low earthen mound than a building. Only the dimensions betray what it once was: roughly six metres by four, with walls that still stand to about 1.4 metres in places and measure over a metre thick at the base. A possible entrance opens to the east.

Drystone huts of this kind, built by laying stones carefully against one another without any binding material, appear at various points across the Kerry landscape and are notoriously difficult to date without excavation. They could represent early medieval activity, post-medieval pastoral use, or something in between. This particular example occupies a terrace on the col, the low saddle of ground between two higher points, which would have offered some shelter from the prevailing Atlantic weather while keeping the interior reasonably dry. The Iveragh peninsula, of which Valentia Island forms the western edge, has one of the densest concentrations of early and prehistoric field monuments in Ireland, and small huts like this one are easily missed among the more dramatic cashels and standing stones that attract most attention.

The site sits within open upland terrain, and the collapsed state of the walls means a visitor might walk past it without registering what they are looking at. The sod-covered rubble and the slight depression where an entrance may once have been are the things to watch for, set into the terrace just below the ridgeline where Kilbeg and Geokaun meet.

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Pete F
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