Hut site, Tullig, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Tullig, Co. Kerry

On the southern slope of Mangerton Mountain in County Kerry, a small rectangular structure sits in rough hill pasture, its drystone walls now collapsed and largely swallowed by grass.

It is easy to overlook, and that is rather the point. What remains measures roughly four metres from north to south and just over two metres east to west, open to the north, with a scatter of loose stones spilling downhill to the south where the ground has gradually shed them over the years.

The structure is a hut site, a category of simple building found across upland Ireland, typically associated with seasonal pastoral activity such as transhumance, where people and livestock would move to higher ground in summer months. Drystone construction, which uses carefully stacked stone without mortar, was the standard technique for such shelters, quick to build, relatively easy to repair, and reliant entirely on what the landscape provided. One small but telling detail here is that the southern portion of the interior floor has been deliberately raised to level out the hillslope, a practical adjustment that suggests whoever built it was working with the terrain rather than against it. The walls, now standing only around thirty centimetres high and half a metre thick where they survive, would once have supported a roof of turf or timber, long since gone.

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Pete F
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