Hut site, Rinn Chonaill, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the eastern slopes of Reenconnell in County Kerry, there sits what may once have been someone's home.
A low circular foundation, roughly two and a half metres across, is all that remains, its outline subtle enough that a casual walker might step over it without a second thought. The qualification matters here: this is a possible hut site, not a confirmed one, and that uncertainty is part of what makes it worth pausing over. Circular hut foundations of this kind, where stones were arranged to form the base of a small dwelling, are found across the Dingle Peninsula and represent some of the oldest traces of everyday habitation in the Irish landscape.
The site lies within the Corca Dhuibhne region, the Irish-speaking heartland of the Dingle Peninsula, an area extraordinarily dense with early archaeological remains. It was recorded as part of a comprehensive survey of that peninsula published in 1986 by J. Cuppage, a systematic effort to document the area's layered prehistoric and early historic remains. At a diameter of approximately 2.6 metres, the structure would have been compact even by the standards of early Irish vernacular building, just large enough to shelter a person or two, perhaps as a seasonal shelter for someone working the slopes above.