Hut site, Fehanagh, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Fehanagh, Co. Kerry

On the north-east-facing slope of Knockowen Mountain in south-west Kerry, a circle of stones barely visible above the surrounding blanket bog marks the remains of a dwelling that was once cut directly into the hillside.

The structure is modest even by ancient standards, just 2.9 metres in diameter, its drystone walls, built without mortar by layering and fitting stones against one another, now collapsed to their lowest courses. Those surviving courses stand no more than 0.9 metres at their highest point and as little as 0.2 metres where the ground has been less forgiving. The stones protrude through the bog cover rather than rising above it, which gives the site a slightly submerged quality, as though the mountain is in the process of slowly absorbing it.

What makes the location particularly interesting is that this small hut does not sit alone. Immediately to the west lies an enclosure, the kind of bounded space that might once have kept animals or marked out a working area, and a second hut site of similar character sits only 12 metres to the north-west. Relict field boundaries, the faint linear traces of long-abandoned agricultural organisation, survive in the same vicinity. Together these fragments suggest not an isolated shelter but part of a small settlement or seasonal farming arrangement, the kind of upland landscape that communities once worked before population shifts, land exhaustion, or clearance made such marginal ground unviable. The hut itself was cut roughly 0.3 metres into the slope on its southern side, a practical technique for levelling a floor on uneven terrain and for gaining some natural shelter from prevailing conditions.

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Pete F
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