Hut site, Na Gleannta Thuaidh, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Na Gleannta Thuaidh, Co. Kerry

On a hillside in Na Gleannta Thuaidh, in the north of Kerry's Dingle Peninsula, a small D-shaped stone foundation sits pressed against an old field wall as though seeking shelter from it.

The structure measures roughly 2.4 by 2 metres, with walls surviving to about 2 metres in height, and a second, slightly larger outline of a similar building is visible about 15 metres to the south-east. Together they form the kind of quiet, easily overlooked cluster that rewards a careful eye but asks nothing of a casual one.

The foundations were recorded by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, a landmark piece of fieldwork that catalogued the extraordinary density of early remains across this part of west Kerry. Hut sites of this kind are a common feature of the Irish upland and coastal landscape; they are the stone remains of small shelters or dwellings, often associated with seasonal grazing or agricultural activity, and their precise dating can be difficult to establish without excavation. What is notable here is the pairing of the two structures and the way the larger of them has been built to abut an existing field boundary, suggesting that the wall itself was already a feature of the landscape when the hut was constructed, and that whoever built it was working within an already organised, already human-shaped terrain.

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Pete F
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