Hut site, Killelan, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Killelan, Co. Kerry

On the eastern slopes of Killelan in County Kerry, a pair of ancient circular huts sit quietly beneath the rough upland pasture, their existence largely obscured by the three sheepfolds that were built directly on top of them.

The overlap is almost poetic: livestock enclosures from a later age of farming pressing down on the remains of structures that, in their own time, likely served a not entirely different purpose, sheltering people working the same difficult land.

The two huts are conjoined and built from corbelled drystone, a technique in which stones are laid so that each course projects slightly inward over the one below, eventually closing to form a roof without the need for mortar or timber. The larger of the two, to the west, measures 3.1 metres by 2.6 metres internally, with its walls still standing to a maximum height of 1.27 metres in places. A narrow entrance, just half a metre wide, opens to the southeast, and a passage three metres long connects this western chamber to the smaller eastern hut. That eastern structure survives only in its lower courses, with an internal diameter of 2.1 metres. The site sits among the remnants of numerous old field fences, suggesting this patch of upland was once a good deal more organised and inhabited than it appears today. The survey of the Iveragh Peninsula compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan, published by Cork University Press in 1996, recorded the site in detail, and it remains one of the more complete examples of paired corbelled huts in the south Kerry uplands.

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Pete F
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