Hut site, Lehid, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Lehid, Co. Kerry

On a sloped hillside at Lehid in south-west Kerry, someone long ago took considerable care to make a very small space liveable.

The hut that once stood here measured just three metres across, yet its builders did not simply pile stones on uneven ground and accept an awkward floor. They worked with the slope itself, cutting into the uphill side to a depth of roughly forty centimetres and leaving the downhill side raised, so that the finished interior sat level. It is a modest piece of practical engineering, easy to overlook, and all the more interesting for that.

What survives today are the lower courses of a drystone wall, built without mortar in the traditional manner, now partly collapsed and standing to around half a metre in height with a thickness of about sixty centimetres. The hut sits within a larger enclosure, and its wall butts against the north-eastern arc of that enclosure from the inside, suggesting the two structures were related, perhaps built together or at least understood as belonging to the same small complex. Circular hut sites of this kind are found throughout Kerry and the wider west of Ireland, often associated with seasonal grazing or with early medieval settlement, though without excavation it is difficult to assign a precise date or function to any individual example. The care taken here to level the interior by cutting into the slope points to a builder thinking practically about daily use, a detail that brings the site quietly to life.

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Pete F
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