Hut site, Na Dúnta Thiar, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Na Dúnta Thiar, Co. Kerry

On the southern slopes of Sea Hill, above the long curve of Dingle Bay, two old hut foundations sit joined together as if in conversation.

What makes them quietly odd is not simply their age or their setting, but the fact that each was built in a completely different way. One is rectangular, the other circular, and the two forms were deliberately conjoined into a single structure, suggesting either a change of mind, a change of builder, or a practical addition made at some later point to an already-standing dwelling.

The rectangular southern hut, roughly 4.3 by 3.6 metres, preserves several interior details that raise more questions than they answer. There is a small wall-cupboard set into the fabric of the wall, and in the north-east corner a low recess at ground level, just 0.8 metres wide and 0.25 metres high, not quite large enough for a person but possibly intended for storage of some kind. More puzzling still is a roughly D-shaped area of the floor, measuring about 1.6 by 2.6 metres, which has been deliberately enclosed by a setting of stones. Nobody has yet established what this internal subdivision was for. The northern hut is circular and built by corbelling, a technique in which courses of drystone are laid so that each projects slightly inward over the one below, gradually closing the roof without the need for timber; this produces a beehive-shaped chamber. At 3.8 metres in diameter and still standing 1.1 metres high, it retains a clear sense of its original form. Both structures were documented in the 1986 Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey compiled by J. Cuppage for Oidhreacht Chorca Dhuibhne, a survey that remains one of the most detailed records of the peninsula's early built environment.

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