Hut site, Caherlehillan, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Caherlehillan, Co. Kerry

On the south-western slopes of Mullaghnarakill, in the rough boggy pasture of the Iveragh Peninsula, a circle of large boulders sits half-swallowed by the ground.

It is barely there: a single course of stones, 4.4 metres across, marking the footprint of a hut that has otherwise entirely vanished into the hillside. There is no roof, no standing wall, no obvious sign to a passing eye that this slight ring of rock was ever anything more than a natural arrangement. That near-invisibility is precisely what makes it worth pausing over.

What survives is the lowest course of a circular hut, the kind of small dry-stone structure that would once have sheltered a person, or a family, or perhaps livestock, somewhere on the margins of settled life on this Kerry hillside. The Iveragh Peninsula is exceptionally dense with this sort of early remains, many of them associated with the early medieval period, when dispersed farming settlements left traces across upland ground that was later abandoned to bog. As the ground rose around these structures over the centuries, peat and wet soil gradually consumed the upper courses of stone, leaving only what was deepest and most firmly bedded. The 4.4-metre diameter is modest even by the standards of such huts, suggesting a simple, single-roomed structure rather than anything elaborate.

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Pete F
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