Hut site, Tuar An Chladáin, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Settlement Sites

Hut site, Tuar An Chladáin, Co. Kerry

On a south-facing mountain slope in County Kerry, eight ancient stone huts sit arranged on a natural terrace as though someone simply walked away and never came back.

The site at Tuar An Chladáin occupies open, unenclosed terrain between the summits of Coomacarrea and Meenteog, on the northern side of the Owroe river valley, and it is precisely this exposure that makes it so quietly arresting. There are no surrounding earthworks, no obvious enclosure, just a cluster of circular structures set against the mountain's fall.

The huts are dry-stone constructions, round in plan, the sort of simple shelters associated with seasonal pastoral activity or, in some cases, much earlier settlement. Seven of the eight survive in poor condition, reduced to one or two courses of stonework, their diameters ranging from roughly two metres to six metres. Together they spread across a forty-metre stretch running east to west along the terraced ledge. The northernmost hut is the exception: better preserved than its neighbours, it gives a clearer sense of what the group once looked like as a functioning cluster. The survey of the Iveragh Peninsula compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan, published by Cork University Press in 1996, recorded the site and remains the principal source for what is known about it.

The terrain here is genuinely open mountain, and finding the site involves navigating the kind of landscape where the ground underfoot changes quickly and landmarks are few. The south-facing aspect means the terrace catches light well on a clear day, which helps when trying to distinguish low stonework from the surrounding boulder scatter. The huts are easier to read once you are among them than from a distance, the courses of stone becoming legible only up close.

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