Hut site, Mangerton, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Mangerton, Co. Kerry

On the southern slope of Mangerton Mountain in County Kerry, just barely visible above the surface of the surrounding bog, sits the outline of a circular stone structure small enough that two people standing inside it would have little room to spare.

The bog itself has done most of the work of preservation here, holding the collapsed drystone wall in place so that it still protrudes a few centimetres above the peat. Drystone construction uses no mortar; stones are fitted and stacked against each other by weight and careful placement alone, a technique that can endure for centuries when conditions are right.

What remains is a roughly circular hut, just 2.2 metres in diameter, its wall collapsed to a height of about 0.3 metres and a thickness of 0.6 metres. A narrow entrance, only half a metre wide, faces to the north-west. The structure sits on a terrace of rough hill pasture, which suggests it was placed deliberately on level ground within an otherwise uneven landscape. Structures like this on Irish uplands are often associated with seasonal grazing practices, sometimes called booleying, where people and animals moved to higher ground in summer months, though the notes available for this particular site do not specify a date or period of use.

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Pete F
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