Hut site, Derrynafeana, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Derrynafeana, Co. Kerry

On the lower south-western slopes of Slievanore in County Kerry, a small arc of heather-covered stonework just manages to hold itself above the surface of a shallow cutaway bog.

It is easy to walk past without registering what it is: the lower courses of a collapsed drystone wall, still tracing most of a D-shape, with a straight eastern side running roughly two and a half metres north to south and the curved portion stretching about two and a half metres east to west. The wall itself, where it survives, is not much more than half a metre high and less than a metre thick. What makes it worth pausing over is precisely its modesty, the way it sits in rough pasture on the bog margin, neither dramatic nor entirely erased.

This kind of small structure, built from dry-laid stone without mortar, is a recurring presence across the upland and marginal landscapes of south-west Kerry. The D-shaped plan, with one straight side and one curved, appears in a range of early contexts across Ireland, from simple seasonal shelters to ancillary structures attached to more substantial enclosures. The cutaway bog around Derrynafeana, where turf has been removed over generations, has in places exposed or partially exposed older ground surfaces, which may explain why the wall here protrudes visibly above the surrounding terrain rather than lying entirely buried. The site sits within a wider landscape on the slopes of Slievanore that would repay slow, attentive walking.

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Pete F
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