Hut site, Ownagarry, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Settlement Sites

Hut site, Ownagarry, Co. Kerry

On the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, beneath a covering of sod, sit the remains of two circular huts that have been quietly subsiding into the landscape for centuries.

What makes the site quietly unusual is the suggestion that the two structures may have been conjoined, sharing a wall or entrance passage in a way that would have made them function as a single domestic unit rather than two separate dwellings. The oval-shaped interior that contains them hints at a surrounding enclosure, the kind of modest boundary that would once have defined a small farmstead or seasonal settlement.

The surviving archaeology is spare. Towards the centre of the enclosure, the twin hut footprints are legible mainly as low, grass-covered mounds. Of the southern hut, only a short curved stretch of walling remains above ground, enough to confirm the circular plan but not much more. The site was documented by archaeologists A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan in their 1996 survey of the Iveragh Peninsula, published by Cork University Press, which catalogued the extraordinary density of early remains across this part of south Kerry. Sites like this one, modest and unmonumental, represent the ordinary end of that record: the places where people actually lived and worked, rather than the ceremonial or defensive structures that tend to attract more attention.

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