Hut site, Inchee, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
At Inchee on the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, pressed against the outside of an enclosing wall, are the remains of a circular hut so small and so thoroughly reclaimed by vegetation that a casual walker might step over it without a second glance.
The foundations trace a circle with an internal diameter of just 2.8 metres, roughly the floor area of a large wardrobe, and the collapsed wall survives to a height of only 0.55 metres above the ground.
The hut sits on the north-north-east face of a larger enclosing structure, a detail that raises quiet questions about how the two features related to one another. Circular hut foundations of this kind are common across early medieval Ireland, typically associated with small farming settlements or monastic enclosures, where a single dry-stone wall defined both living space and the boundary between the domestic and the wider landscape. The positioning of this particular hut against the exterior of the enclosure wall, rather than within it, is a small anomaly worth noting. Its documentation draws on the archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan and published by Cork University Press in 1996, a systematic effort to record the dense and often overlooked archaeology of South Kerry.