Hut site, Na Gleannta Thuaidh, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Na Gleannta Thuaidh, Co. Kerry

On the south-eastern slopes of Com Amhais in the Na Gleannta Thuaidh area of County Kerry, two small stone huts sit joined together, built in the corbelled drystone method familiar from the Dingle Peninsula's more celebrated clochán clusters.

Corbelling is an ancient technique in which successive rings of dry-laid stone are gradually overlapped inward until they meet at a crown, producing a beehive-shaped roof without mortar or timber. What makes this particular pair unusual is their conjoined arrangement and their state of partial collapse, which has left the site in an ambiguous, half-readable condition that rewards careful attention.

The larger of the two huts measures roughly 3.45 metres in diameter and 1.35 metres in height, with walls between 1.45 and 1.6 metres thick. A lintelled passage, that is, a short entrance corridor roofed with flat slabs laid across upright stones, once connected it to the smaller southern hut, but this passage has partly collapsed. The smaller hut is about 1.6 metres in diameter and 1.2 metres high, and its original exterior entrance on the east side has been blocked up at some point, meaning its interior is now accessible only through gaps in its deteriorating roof. A possible third structure was recorded abutting the south-western side of the pair, though its remains are fragmentary. The site was documented by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, which catalogued a remarkable concentration of early stone monuments across this part of west Kerry.

The huts sit on a hillside rather than in any managed or signposted context, and the semi-collapsed roof of the smaller structure means that understanding the original layout requires a little patience and some lateral peering. The blocked eastern entrance and the ruined passage are the details worth locating, as together they suggest the two chambers once functioned as a connected unit, perhaps for shelter, storage, or some combination of the two, though the archaeology does not firmly answer which.

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