Hut site, Na Gleannta Thuaidh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
Folded into a disused field boundary on the rocky lower slopes of a valley on the western side of the Brandon mountain range, a small circular stone foundation sits quietly absorbed into the landscape, easy to mistake for just another feature of the rough terrain.
It is, in fact, the remains of a corbelled drystone hut, a structure built without mortar, with stones layered inward and upward to form a self-supporting roof or walls. The surviving foundation measures at least 2.2 metres in diameter, stands roughly 0.6 metres high, and has walls about 1.5 metres thick, dimensions that speak to the considerable effort put into its construction, even if its exact age and purpose remain unrecorded.
The site sits in Na Gleannta Thuaidh, the northern valleys of the Corca Dhuibhne peninsula, better known in English as the Dingle Peninsula, a stretch of west Kerry that preserves an extraordinary density of early remains. The structure was documented by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey, a systematic effort to catalogue the peninsula's archaeological fabric. The fact that the hut foundation has been incorporated into a later field boundary suggests the landscape was worked and reworked over long periods, with earlier structures pressed into service as convenient ready-made walls. Whether the hut was originally a dwelling, a seasonal shelter for those grazing animals on the mountain slopes, or something else entirely, is not recorded.