Hut site, Móin An Fhraoigh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On a stretch of bogland on the Dingle Peninsula, the remains of a prehistoric settlement have been reduced to something easily missed: two concentric oval patches of bare ground, the outer ring scattered with small stones, the inner one marking out the ghost of a single room.
It is the kind of site that rewards attention precisely because there is so little left to see.
What survives at Móin An Fhraoigh is classified as a univallate enclosure, meaning an enclosed area defined by a single boundary, in this case now largely dissolved into the landscape. The outer band of stony soil reaches a maximum of five metres across, and within it sits a smaller oval that once formed the interior of a hut, measuring seven metres east to west and just under five metres north to south on the inside. A gap of roughly two to two and a half metres on the southern side marks where the entrance stood. The site was recorded and described in the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, compiled by J. Cuppage, a systematic effort to document the extraordinary density of early remains across this part of Kerry. The broader Corca Dhuibhne region contains some of the highest concentrations of prehistoric and early medieval field monuments in Ireland, and this modest hut site sits quietly among them.