Hut site, Gortacreenteen, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Gortacreenteen, Co. Kerry

A low ring of stones barely breaking the surface of a Kerry bog is easy to walk past without registering what it is.

On an east-facing slope in Gortacreenteen, overlooking the valley of the Slaheny River, the collapsed lower courses of a roughly circular stone wall mark out a space that was once an enclosed dwelling or shelter. The hut measures approximately six metres north to south and just over five metres east to west, with wall remains still protruding up to half a metre above the surrounding bog surface. Rubble is scattered across the interior, and larger boulder-type stones remain visible along the north-western arc, hinting at the original construction. A narrow entrance, about one metre wide, opens along the south-eastern arc, oriented in the direction of the slope and the valley below.

What makes the site quietly compelling is its companionship. Another hut site of the same general type lies approximately thirteen metres to the north, suggesting that this was not an isolated shelter but part of a small cluster of structures sharing the same rough hill grazing ground. Such groupings are not uncommon in Kerry's upland landscape, where seasonal pastoral activity, known in Ireland as booleying, would have drawn people and livestock to higher ground during summer months, requiring at least rudimentary shelter. Whether these huts served that function, or represent something older and more permanent, is not recorded, and the bog that now surrounds the walls has a habit of preserving ambiguity as well as stone.

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Pete F
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