Hut site, Na Gearreidhní, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Na Gearreidhní, Co. Kerry

At the southern edge of where the Oweveen river spills out of Lough Iskanamacteery, in boggy pasture on the Iveragh Peninsula, a small circular structure has slowly been returning to the ground.

It is modest almost to the point of invisibility: collapsed drystone walls, built without mortar, enclosing a space roughly 3.3 metres by 2.5 metres, with the remnant of an entrance facing west. What catches the attention is the addition of a U-shaped annex pressed against that same western side, as though someone later decided the original shelter needed extending, or that it should serve some secondary purpose alongside habitation.

Drystone hut sites of this kind are scattered across the upland and coastal margins of Kerry, the work of people who understood how to build lasting structures using only the stone available underfoot. The circular form, with walls still standing to around 1.3 metres in places despite the collapse, follows a tradition of small-scale vernacular building whose origins and precise dates are often difficult to pin down without excavation. The location, immediately south of the river outflow from the lake, places it at the edge of usable ground, the kind of marginal spot chosen either for seasonal shelter, perhaps by those moving cattle to summer pasture, or simply because it offered proximity to water and some natural shelter from the prevailing weather. The annex complicates any single tidy explanation, suggesting the structure had more than one function or was adapted over time.

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Pete F
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