Hut site, Gortderrig, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Settlement Sites

Hut site, Gortderrig, Co. Kerry

On the lower northern slopes of the East Pap of Dana, one of the twin peaks of the Paps of Dana in County Kerry, a collapsed oval wall barely breaks the surface of the surrounding bog.

It is easy to read as nothing more than a slight irregularity in the heather, yet the lower courses of its drystone construction are still there, measuring roughly 5.3 metres east to west and 4 metres north to south, the outline of a small roofed shelter that once sheltered a person or a family on this exposed hillside.

The hut sits within a wider landscape of relict field walls, the ghostly boundaries of a farming system that has long since been abandoned and partly consumed by the cutaway bog around it. Drystone construction, which uses no mortar and relies entirely on the careful placement of stones, was the typical building method for such structures throughout upland Ireland, and walls of this kind can survive for centuries even when neglected, their collapse gradual rather than sudden. The site was recorded by Coyne in 2000, and a second hut site of similar character lies approximately 50 metres to the south, suggesting that what remains here is not a single isolated dwelling but a fragment of something more organised, perhaps a small cluster of seasonal shelters associated with the management of hill pasture.

The setting on the northern face of the East Pap of Dana places the site in rough, boggy terrain where the ground is uneven underfoot and the heather can be dense. The two Paps, with their distinctive rounded summits, are among the more recognisable landmarks in this part of Kerry, and the slopes below them retain this kind of scattered archaeological presence, half-buried and easy to overlook unless you are already looking for it.

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Pete F
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