Hut site, Gortadirra, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Gortadirra, Co. Kerry

On a steep, north-east-facing slope in the heather and rough pasture of Gortadirra, Co. Kerry, a small rectangular structure sits quietly collapsing into the hillside.

It measures just 3.1 metres north to south and 1.9 metres east to west, its walls of drystone construction, that is, stone laid without mortar, now reduced to a tumbled line roughly 0.6 metres thick and 0.4 metres high. Ferns have filled the level interior, and rubble has begun to spill downslope from the south-east corner. What draws the eye, though, is the view: looking north-east from this break in the slope, Lough Leane opens out below, the largest of the Killarney lakes.

What this structure was used for, and by whom, is not recorded. It is one of three such hut sites clustered in close proximity on the same hillside, with a second lying roughly six metres to the east and a third approximately 75 metres to the north. That grouping suggests some form of organised, if modest, occupation of this upland ground, possibly seasonal grazing activity of the kind historically associated with booley settlements, where people moved with their livestock to higher pastures in summer months. The drystone technique and rectangular plan offer few precise dating clues on their own, as both were used across a very long span of Irish rural history. Without excavation, the structures keep their chronology to themselves.

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Pete F
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