Hut site, Rinn Chonaill, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Rinn Chonaill, Co. Kerry

At the head of a broad valley running north from Dingle Harbour, a small enclosure quietly holds more than first seems apparent.

Within its subrectangular bank lie a burial ground, a large stone cross, and the outline of a structure so modest in scale that it is easy to pass off as a pile of field clearance. It is not. The remains are those of a rectangular hut, its interior measuring just 3.2 by 2.5 metres, its walls reduced over time to stony banks no more than 0.4 metres high, pressing up against the southern edge of the enclosure bank.

The site is known as Calluragh burial ground, or An Cheallúnach in Irish, a name that carries the word cill, meaning a small early ecclesiastical enclosure, the kind of modest churchyard or hermit's precinct that dots the western peninsulas of Ireland. Such enclosures often combined the practical and the sacred, accommodating a small community or a solitary religious figure alongside their dead. The presence of both a stone cross and the hut remains within a single bounded space is consistent with this early Christian tradition, though the precise date of any of the structures here is not recorded. The site sits on a very gentle south-facing slope, sheltered by the valley that opens toward Dingle, a setting typical of early monastic or anchoritic foundations that favoured mild orientation and access to water. Archaeological documentation of the peninsula, carried out by J. Cuppage and published in 1986 as part of the Corca Dhuibhne survey, brought the full complexity of this modest cluster of remains into clearer focus.

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Pete F
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