Hut site, Gortalicka, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Gortalicka, Co. Kerry

On a west-facing slope in the valley of the Slievenaneav stream in County Kerry, a low ring of tumbled stone marks the outline of a structure so modest it is easy to walk past without registering what it is.

The remains measure roughly four metres east to west and just under three metres north to south, the oval footprint of a small hut whose drystone walls, built without mortar by carefully fitting stone against stone, have long since collapsed. What survives sits no more than about forty centimetres above the ground, with larger stones still visible at the base and rubble scattered loosely around the perimeter.

The site sits in pasture among occasional rock outcrops, the kind of marginal upland terrain that was once far more intensively used than it is today. Structures of this type, built from local stone in an oval or sub-circular plan, appear across Kerry and the wider west of Ireland and are associated variously with seasonal farming activity, booleying, or earlier forms of year-round settlement. The Slievenaneav valley would have offered both water and some shelter from prevailing winds, practical considerations that likely guided whoever chose this particular west-facing slope. No dating evidence is recorded for this specific structure, so its age remains an open question, though its form is consistent with a long tradition of vernacular building in the region that stretches back centuries and in some cases much further.

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Pete F
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