Hut site, Mangerton, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Mangerton, Co. Kerry

On the south-east-facing slope of Mangerton Mountain in County Kerry, a small circle of collapsed drystone barely announces itself against the rough hill pasture.

It measures just 2.4 metres east to west and 2.2 metres north to south, the kind of dimensions that would have made for a tight but functional shelter. What makes it quietly worth attention is the care taken in its construction: whoever built it partly cut the northern side of the floor into the hillside to a depth of about half a metre, and raised the southern portion slightly, in a deliberate effort to level out the interior against the natural slope of the ground. The attempt only partially succeeded; the floor still tilts gently southward. That small, practical struggle against the gradient survives in the earthwork itself.

The hut sits within a broader landscape of relict field boundaries, the ghostly outlines of an agricultural system that has long since ceased to function. Drystone construction of this kind, walls built without mortar from locally gathered stone, was common across upland Ireland for structures ranging from early medieval dwellings to post-medieval seasonal shelters used during the summer grazing practice known as booleying, when people and livestock moved together to higher pastures. The surviving wall thickness of around 0.6 metres, though now collapsed, suggests a reasonably substantial original build. A second hut site of the same general type lies approximately 22 metres to the north-west, hinting that this was never a solitary structure but part of a small cluster of occupation on the mountain.

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Pete F
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