Hut site, Lios Na Mbóbhán, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Lios Na Mbóbhán, Co. Kerry

On a west-facing slope above the Owenmore valley in County Kerry, a small circular structure sits pressed against the inner wall of an ancient enclosure, its stones still reaching a height of 1.7 metres in places.

The upper courses lean inward in a slight corbel, a technique in which successive rings of stone are laid so that each projects a little further than the one below, gradually closing the space overhead without the need for timber or mortar. It is a remarkably precise piece of building for something whose outline is now only partially legible.

The site at Lios Na Mbóbhán consists of a sub-circular enclosure containing two internal hut-sites, and it is the second of these that holds the more arresting detail. The hut is just 3.5 metres in internal diameter, and rather than standing freely, it abuts the enclosure wall to the west, sharing its inner face with that boundary. Only that inner face has survived intact; the rest of the hut's perimeter is traceable only as a very slight bank in the ground. Where the hut meets the enclosure wall, the exterior of that wall bulges outward in an irregular mass, and this protrusion has been tentatively read as a remnant of an earlier enclosing element, perhaps predating the drystone wall that now defines the boundary. A recess cuts back into the hut wall beneath this bulge, though collapse in the area makes the relationship between the two features difficult to resolve with any certainty. The survey of the Dingle Peninsula carried out by J. Cuppage and published in 1986 as part of the Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey provided the foundational description of the site, and the ambiguities it noted have not been fully resolved since.

What remains is a structure that raises more questions than it answers: a tiny, carefully built room embedded in a boundary wall, with a recess of uncertain purpose and a bulge that may or may not remember an older arrangement of the land. The valley below continues west toward the Atlantic, and the slope gives the site a quiet exposure to whatever weather comes in off it.

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