Hut site, Glanrastel, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Glanrastel, Co. Kerry

On a north-facing slope above the Glanrastel River in County Kerry, a low ring of tumbled stone barely announces itself above the surrounding bog.

The internal diameter of the circular hut measures just 2.6 metres across, a space roughly the size of a large wardrobe laid flat, and yet someone once considered it shelter enough to build deliberately and with care.

The structure is a drystone hut site, the kind of small, corbelled or walled enclosure found scattered across the uplands of Kerry and associated with a broad sweep of Irish prehistory and early medieval use. What makes this one worth pausing over is the detail of its construction. The wall, though now collapsed to around 0.6 metres high, was built up on its northern, exposed side and cut into the slope on the southern side, a practical response to the hill's gradient that gave the interior a degree of shelter and levelness. The lower courses of stone are partly reclaimed by grass and bog, so that the structure has sunk into the landscape rather than standing apart from it. Twenty-seven metres to the east, a second hut site occupies the same rough pasture, suggesting this was not an isolated waypoint but something more organised, perhaps a small cluster of shelters used seasonally by people working these upland margins.

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Pete F
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