Hut site, Derrynafinnia, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On a south-east-facing slope above the valley of the Clydagh River in County Kerry, four small huts sit scattered across rough, heather-clad hill pasture, close enough together to suggest some shared purpose yet spread across roughly sixty metres of hillside.
One of them, oval in plan and measuring about 2.8 metres east to west and 2.2 metres north to south, survives as a low ring of collapsed drystone wall, its interior now choked with rubble. Drystone construction relies on no mortar, the stones instead being carefully selected and stacked so that their own weight holds the structure firm, a technique used across Ireland from prehistory well into the post-medieval period. What brought people to this particular slope, and when, the ground itself is no longer saying clearly.
The four huts form a loose cluster, with one sitting only about three metres to the west of this example, and two more positioned roughly thirty-five metres to the north-east and sixty metres to the south. That kind of grouping, on marginal upland ground with a river valley below, is consistent with seasonal use of higher pastures, a practice known in Ireland as booleying, where people and livestock moved to upland grazing in summer months and temporary shelters were built or reused accordingly. Whether that is the explanation here remains open; the rubble-filled interior has not given up whatever evidence it might once have held.