Hut site, Gearhanagoul, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Gearhanagoul, Co. Kerry

In the bogland of Gearhanagoul in south-west Kerry, a circle of stones barely a third of a metre above the ground marks out a space just 2.8 metres across.

That is smaller than most garden sheds, yet it represents what was once a dwelling, or at least a working shelter, built by people who also laid out the field boundaries still faintly legible in the landscape around it.

The structure is a circular hut site, a form of simple dry-stone enclosure found widely across early historic and prehistoric Ireland, typically associated with seasonal settlement, pastoral farming, or smallholding communities who worked marginal upland and boggy ground. Here, the wall survives to a height of only 0.3 metres and a thickness of 0.6 metres, its grass-covered remains blending into the surrounding bog. What makes it slightly more legible than the turf alone would suggest are the radially set stones in the lower courses, laid like spokes fanning outward, which protrude above the bog surface and hint at the original construction technique. The interior is now filled with rubble. About eight metres to the north-east, a second hut site survives in similar condition, and both sit within the broader footprint of an associated field system, suggesting this was once a small but organised agricultural landscape rather than an isolated structure.

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Pete F
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