Hut site, Tuar Sáilín, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Tuar Sáilín, Co. Kerry

On a slope above a tributary of the Owroe river in south Kerry, a cluster of low stone foundations sits quietly beneath what became, in later centuries, a set of sheepfolds.

The livestock enclosures absorbed and obscured the earlier structures so thoroughly that the hut walls survive only as foundation courses, the lowest remaining layer of stone that once supported a wall, but what they outline is a small and coherent settlement of at least four separate structures spread across a modest area of hillside.

The site at Tuar Sáilín comprises three distinct elements recorded during the archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula, published by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan in 1996. Two huts with possible annexes form the core group, each with an average internal diameter of roughly 2.5 metres by 2 metres, their foundations partially concealed by the later sheepfolds built over them. About 20 metres to the east sits a subcircular hut foundation surviving to a single course, measuring approximately 4 metres by 3 metres internally. A fourth structure lies to the north, rectangular in plan with what may be an entrance facing east, and considerably smaller at around 3 metres by 1.5 metres. Old field boundaries survive in the immediate vicinity, suggesting that the people who used these huts were also managing the surrounding land, dividing it into parcels that are now themselves little more than faint lines across the ground.

The variation in shape across the group is worth noting. Circular and subcircular huts are typical of early medieval settlement in Ireland, while the rectangular structure hints at either a different function or a later phase of use. Together, the foundations describe something that was more than a temporary shelter, a small working landscape where people lived alongside their animals and fields, eventually forgotten beneath the practical needs of later generations of farmers.

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