Hut site, Tuar Sáilín, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the lower southern slopes of Coomacarrea, a mountain in south-west Kerry, there is a small oval outline in the ground that most walkers would pass without a second glance.
It is the remains of a hut site, a simple stone-walled structure of the kind once used for seasonal occupation or shelter, now reduced to a low, jumbled ring of rubble half-swallowed by rushes. The footprint is modest, measuring roughly four and a half metres along its longer north-west to south-east axis and just over two metres across, with wall traces surviving to about half a metre in height. Loose rubble has spilled downslope to the south, suggesting the wall has been disturbed or has simply collapsed outward over time.
The site sits on rough hill grazing above the valley of the Owroe River, a position that would have offered whoever occupied it a clear view southward down the valley. Hut sites of this type are relatively common in the upland landscapes of Kerry, often associated with seasonal pastoral activity, though without excavation it is difficult to assign a firm date or function to any individual example. What survives here is essentially the lower courses of a single-skin stone wall, the upper portions long since gone, leaving only the ground-level anatomy of what was once an enclosed space small enough to suggest a single-room structure at most.