Hut site, Cappamore, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On a south-facing slope above the head of Kenmare Bay, a small stone structure sits in pasture beside a stream, so modest in scale that it would be easy to mistake for a natural tumble of rock.
What makes it worth a second look is the care embedded in its construction. The builder, whoever they were, faced a sloping hillside and solved the problem methodically: the northern portion of the floor was cut roughly forty centimetres into the upslope, while the southern portion was built up by around eighty centimetres, producing a reasonably level interior on ground that would otherwise have made habitation awkward.
The structure is D-shaped in plan, measuring about two metres east to west, with the curved northern and southern walls formed from collapsed drystone, now moss-covered. Drystone construction involves stacking stone without mortar, relying instead on careful placement and the weight of the material itself. The straight western side, just over a metre and a half long, is formed not by a purpose-built wall but by an existing field wall, a practical borrowing that suggests the hut was inserted into an already-managed landscape rather than built in open ground. The entrance faces south-east. No date has been firmly established for the structure, and hut sites of this broadly simple type can span a wide range of periods in Irish archaeology, from the early medieval era back into prehistory.