Hut site, Trippul, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
In a field in Trippul, in the north of County Kerry, a crescent of earthen bank curves around a space that was once, in all likelihood, someone's home.
The bank is incomplete, its western side levelled entirely, but enough survives to suggest the original enclosure. Inside that arc sits a low circular platform, roughly seven metres by eight, raised just thirty centimetres above the surrounding ground. That modest rise is often all that marks where a structure once stood.
The site belongs to a cluster of early medieval remains in the area, positioned to the north-east of a nearby univallate rath, meaning a circular enclosure defended by a single earthen bank and ditch, the most common form of defended farmstead in early medieval Ireland. Hut sites like this one are sometimes found in association with raths, and may represent ancillary structures used by the same farming community, whether for shelter, storage, or seasonal occupation. The crescent shape of the enclosing bank here is unusual and worth noting; most comparable sites form a more complete ring. Whether the western gap is the result of deliberate original design or later agricultural clearance is not recorded, though the latter is common across the Irish landscape, where field improvement over centuries has removed earthworks that survived for a millennium or more.