Hut site, Gortnacurra, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
Three small stone structures sit shoulder to shoulder in the north-east corner of an ancient enclosure in Gortnacurra, south-west Kerry, and this one is the westernmost of that tight cluster.
What makes the arrangement quietly peculiar is the proximity: the eastern wall of this hut is literally abutted by its neighbour, the three buildings pressing against one another like terraced houses on a forgotten street. Whether that arrangement reflects simultaneous construction or incremental growth over time is not recorded, but the effect is one of deliberate, almost domestic, organisation within a larger enclosing boundary.
The hut itself is subrectangular in plan, measuring roughly eight metres north to south and just over five metres east to west. Its walls are built in drystone, a technique requiring no mortar, relying instead on careful stacking and the weight of the stone itself to hold the structure together. Those walls survive to about a metre in height in places, though they have partially collapsed, and their thickness of around 0.8 metres suggests a solidity intended to last. The interior floor slopes downward toward the south and is now heavily overgrown with rushes, which points to damp ground conditions that have probably discouraged investigation. A separate enclosure lies roughly twenty metres to the north, hinting that this cluster of huts formed part of a wider organised landscape rather than a single isolated structure.