Hut site, Knocknabro, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Knocknabro, Co. Kerry

At Knocknabro in County Kerry, a small rectangular structure sits against the hillside in a manner that rewards close attention.

The walls, built from uncoursed drystone, meaning stones laid without mortar and without the regular horizontal lines of dressed masonry, still stand to a height of over a metre and a half in places, and are thick enough, at 0.7 metres, to suggest a building meant to last rather than a temporary shelter thrown up for a single season. The north-east corner has collapsed inward, but enough survives to read the original form quite clearly.

The hut measures 4.7 metres along its north-west to south-east axis and 2.6 metres across, a compact but not cramped interior by the standards of early rural building in Ireland. The entrance, just 0.6 metres wide, faces south-west, a common orientation in upland Kerry that offers some shelter from the prevailing wind and weather. The most telling detail is at the north-east end of the interior, where the ground has been deliberately cut some 0.6 metres into the slope. This kind of cut, levelling the floor of a building into rising ground rather than building up the lower side, is a practical technique that also anchors the structure and keeps the back wall partly embedded in the earth for insulation. The hut sits immediately outside and adjoining a separate enclosure to its north-west, and the two were almost certainly related in function, perhaps a working space beside a sheltered living or sleeping area.

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Pete F
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