Hut site, Gearhanagoul, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On a south-facing slope above the valley of the Coomeelan stream in County Kerry, a small D-shaped structure sits half-swallowed by bog, its collapsed drystone walls still tracing out the footprint of what was once a roofed dwelling.
The shape alone is worth pausing over: roughly three metres from north to south, with a straight wall running four and a half metres along the northern side, the whole thing barely larger than a modest garden shed. What makes it quietly remarkable is the care taken to make it habitable on uneven ground. The builders cut into the hillslope on the northern, uphill side and raised the southern portion of the floor, effectively levelling the interior by working with the gradient rather than against it. The lower courses of the wall still protrude a little above the surface of the surrounding bog, which has both preserved and obscured the structure over the centuries.
Drystone construction of this kind, walls built from stacked unmortered stone without the use of lime or mortar, was common across the uplands of south-west Kerry, where suitable stone was plentiful and the terrain demanded compact, practical shelters. Hut sites like this one are notoriously difficult to date without excavation; they could belong to any period from the early medieval to the post-medieval, and were often used seasonally in connection with booleying, the practice of moving livestock to higher summer pastures. The surrounding landscape adds further texture: an enclosure and a second hut site lie roughly forty metres to the east, suggesting this was not an isolated structure but part of a small cluster of activity on the hillside, perhaps a working upland settlement of some kind.