Hut site, Shrone More, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Shrone More, Co. Kerry

On the uplands of Shrone More in County Kerry, a small circular structure sits so reduced by time and stone-robbing that it barely registers as architecture at all.

What remains is a ring of dry stonework no more than two and a half metres across, with just two courses of stone still standing and a maximum height of half a metre. One section of the southern wall leans against a boulder that was never quarried or dressed but simply incorporated as it was found, fixed in the earth. It is the kind of structure that asks more questions than it answers.

This is the third of a series of chambers recorded at the site, lying just north of a companion structure. The fact that it appears to have originally opened northward, and that this entrance has since been robbed out, suggests it once formed part of a more coherent arrangement of small shelters or enclosures on the hillside. The wider context comes from a 2006 upland archaeological survey by F. Coyne, published under the title 'Islands in the clouds', which examined the archaeological landscape of Mount Brandon and the Paps. That study placed structures like this one within a tradition of upland use in Kerry, where seasonal habitation, pastoral activity, and possibly ritual practice left scattered traces across the high ground. Hut sites of this kind are broadly understood as the remains of simple stone shelters, often associated with transhumance, the seasonal movement of people and livestock to summer pastures, though the specifics of any individual structure are rarely recoverable.

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Pete F
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