Hut site, Na Grága, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the high northern slopes of Eagles Hill in County Kerry, in an area known as Na Grága, the remains of a small circular hut sit quietly in rocky mountain terrain.
What makes it worth pausing over is its scale: the structure measures roughly 2.7 metres by 2 metres internally, with walls surviving to around 0.7 metres in height. That is a very modest footprint, barely large enough for a person to lie down in, which raises the obvious question of what it was actually for and who, at some point in the past, saw fit to build it this far up a mountain.
Small drystone hut sites of this kind are scattered across the uplands of the Iveragh Peninsula, the broad finger of land in south Kerry that contains some of the densest concentrations of early field monuments in Ireland. They are generally associated with seasonal activity, whether the tending of livestock on summer pasture, known in Irish tradition as booleying, or the work of solitary figures such as hermits or seasonal labourers who needed basic shelter at altitude. The location here, on the exposed northern face of Eagles Hill in genuinely rocky terrain, suggests something functional and temporary rather than any kind of permanent settlement. No date has been established for this particular structure, and the archaeological record offers little beyond its dimensions and its survival as a ruin.