Hut site, Gowlane, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Gowlane, Co. Kerry

On a north-facing slope above Brandon Bay in County Kerry, a large oval cashel encloses something older and quieter than its outer walls suggest.

A cashel is a stone-built enclosure, typically circular or oval, used in early medieval Ireland to protect a settlement or farmstead, and this one contains within it the ruined traces of at least four hut-sites, the collapsed outlines of small stone dwellings that once formed a self-contained community on the Dingle Peninsula.

The huts survive in varying degrees of preservation. One of the better-documented examples abuts the north-west side of a neighbouring structure and measures roughly 4.3 metres in internal diameter, a modest space by any measure. Its inner wall face can be traced around most of its circumference, though a confused gap interrupts it at the north, where the stonework has tumbled beyond reading. The highest surviving section reaches just 0.45 metres, barely knee-height, and the outer face of the wall has disappeared entirely into the surrounding ground. Beyond these four identifiable structures, scattered spreads of stone, together with indistinct mounds and hollows nearby, suggest there may have been further huts whose forms have simply dissolved into the hillside over time. The site was recorded and described by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey, a landmark inventory of the Corca Dhuibhne region that brought many such overlooked features into systematic documentation for the first time.

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Pete F
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