Hut site, Fustane, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Fustane, Co. Kerry

On the southern slope of Mangerton Mountain in County Kerry, a ring of stones barely rises above the surrounding bog.

It is easy to miss: the western arc is grass-covered, and the collapsed drystone wall that defines the structure stands only twenty centimetres above the surface. Yet what remains is the outline of a circular hut, just 2.2 metres in diameter, that once housed a person or served some purpose on this rough hill pasture above the valley.

The structure is a hut site of the kind found scattered across upland Ireland, where people seasonally grazed livestock or worked land at higher elevations, sometimes over many centuries. Built from dry-laid stone without mortar, such walls relied entirely on the careful fitting of one stone against another for their stability. The bog has since crept around and partly over this one, preserving it in a half-submerged state. Running along the eastern arc of the hut, a relict field boundary survives as a separate feature, suggesting that this was not an isolated shelter but part of a small organised landscape, a patch of ground that someone once divided, claimed, and worked on the flanks of Mangerton.

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Pete F
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