Hut site, Na Gleannta Thuaidh, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Na Gleannta Thuaidh, Co. Kerry

Sitting in the south-west corner of a rocky field in Na Gleannta Thuaidh, on the Dingle Peninsula, is what remains of a clochán, a type of dry-stone corbelled hut built without mortar, in which successive rings of stone are laid so that each course projects slightly inward until the structure closes at the top like a beehive.

This one has largely collapsed, which is not unusual for a structure of its kind; without regular maintenance, the carefully balanced stonework tends to settle and spread over time. What catches the attention, though, is something resting on the field wall immediately to the west: a portion of the upper disc of a rotary quern, the kind of hand-turned grinding stone used to mill grain. It is a small but telling detail, a fragment of domestic life left in plain sight.

The site was recorded as part of the Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, published by J. Cuppage in 1986, a thorough regional survey that documented the extraordinary concentration of early medieval and prehistoric remains in this part of Kerry. The quern fragment connects the site to the everyday routines of whoever lived or worked here, since rotary querns were in common use from the Iron Age through the early medieval period and beyond. The clochán itself, though now mostly fallen, would once have formed a sheltered, functional space, probably part of a small agricultural or monastic settlement of the kind that dots this coastline.

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Pete F
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