Hut site, Crohane, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On a south-facing slope in the rough commonage of Crohane in County Kerry, a small circular structure sits collapsed in on itself, its interior buried under a heap of its own fallen stone.
It is the kind of thing that could pass for a natural rock formation to anyone moving quickly across the hillside, yet its dimensions, roughly 2.8 metres east to west and 2.4 metres north to south, suggest deliberate construction rather than geological accident.
The hut was built using drystone walling, a technique that requires no mortar, relying instead on the careful stacking and interlocking of stones to achieve stability. The wall survives to around 0.4 metres in height and is roughly 0.55 metres thick, though the upper courses have long since collapsed inward, forming a rubble mound about 0.65 metres high that now fills and obscures the interior entirely. What once may have been a small shelter, perhaps seasonal, perhaps something older and more permanent, is now largely illegible from the inside. A second hut site sits immediately to the east, abutting this one, and approximately 30 metres to the south there are the remains of a field system, suggesting that this corner of the hillside was once part of a more organised agricultural or pastoral landscape rather than the open commonage it appears today.