Hut site, Roads, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Roads, Co. Kerry

On the eastern cliff-face of Foileye Head, above the long sweep of Dingle Bay, two walls are all that remain of a structure that once looked out over one of the most trafficked stretches of water on Ireland's Atlantic coast.

The site is modest by any measure, but the detail that lingers is in the stonework: the north-east angle of the surviving walls is corbelled, meaning the stones are laid in overlapping courses that project inward and upward, a technique associated with early medieval and early Christian building in Ireland. It suggests a certain deliberate craft rather than a casual field enclosure.

Only the northern and eastern walls have survived. The north wall runs to 3.75 metres; the eastern wall, noticeably longer at 12.5 metres, has a slight curve along its length, which may reflect the natural contour of the headland or a deliberate shaping of the structure. Field walls from the surrounding agricultural landscape abut the hut, which complicates any attempt to read the site cleanly, but also hints at a long continuity of use in this coastal townland of Roads on the Iveragh Peninsula. The relationship between the hut and those later field boundaries has not been fully disentangled, and the original function of the building, whether domestic, monastic, or something else, is not recorded.

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Pete F
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