Hut site, Na Gleannta Thuaidh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
In the uplands of Na Gleannta Thuaidh, in the far west of the Dingle Peninsula, a small circular stone structure sits in the landscape doing double duty across the centuries.
On the outside it reads as an ancient corbelled hut; on the inside, a later sheep-pen or shelter has been built within its walls, so that the same stone enclosure has served, at different points in time, as human dwelling and animal fold.
The hut is built in the corbelled drystone technique, a method in which flat stones are laid in overlapping courses that gradually draw inward and upward to form a self-supporting dome or beehive shape, with no mortar holding any of it together. The structure is modest in its dimensions: 3.5 metres in diameter, 1.4 metres high, with walls 1.5 metres thick. That wall thickness is not unusual for this type of construction; the mass of stone is precisely what gives a corbelled hut its stability and its insulating quality. Structures of this kind are scattered across the Dingle Peninsula and are associated broadly with early medieval settlement, though precise dating of any individual example is difficult without excavation. This particular hut sits roughly 125 metres south of another recorded site in the same area, suggesting a cluster of activity in the surrounding landscape rather than an isolated curiosity. It was documented by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey, a landmark survey of the peninsula's dense concentration of early monuments.