Hut site, Inchinanagh, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Settlement Sites

Hut site, Inchinanagh, Co. Kerry

On a west-facing slope above the Slaheny River valley in south-west Kerry, a low ring of heather-covered stone barely announces itself above the boggy ground.

What protrudes is slight, only around thirty centimetres above the surface, but beneath the peat the wall continues a further forty centimetres down, the bog having slowly swallowed much of what was once a complete circular structure. The break in the wall on the east-south-east side, roughly two metres wide, is likely where a door once stood, oriented to catch the morning light and shelter from the prevailing Atlantic weather.

The hut measures approximately 4.9 metres north to south and 4.6 metres east to west, with walls around 0.85 metres thick. These proportions are consistent with the kind of small, single-cell stone shelters found across upland Kerry, used variously as seasonal dwellings, shepherd's bothies, or as part of a wider pattern of transhumance, the practice of moving livestock to higher ground in summer months. The site does not stand alone in the landscape: roughly twenty-five metres to the north lies a separate enclosure, suggesting this was once part of a small cluster of related structures, perhaps a modest farmstead or seasonal settlement working the rough hill pasture above the valley.

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Pete F
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