Hut site, Gortderrig, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Gortderrig, Co. Kerry

On the lower northern slopes of the East Pap of Dana, one of the twin quartzite peaks in Kerry known collectively as the Paps of Dana, a small circular structure sits quietly in cutaway bog and rough heather, surrounded by the ghostly outlines of field walls that have long since lost whatever land they once organised.

The hut is easy to miss, and easier still to misread as a natural tumble of stone, but the lower courses of its wall survive well enough to show that this was carefully built, not improvised.

The structure measures roughly six metres north to south and five metres east to west, with a wall of random rubble, meaning uncoursed stone of varying sizes set without mortar, that still stands to around 1.5 metres in height along its western arc, which is the best-preserved section. The wall is about 1.8 metres thick, a solidity that suggests it once carried considerably more height. A single entrance, just one metre wide, faces east. Within the eastern half of the interior, rubble has collapsed inward, and more lies scattered around the outer perimeter. A further drystone wall running north to south through the centre of the hut may represent a later division of the space, added after the original structure was already in use, though its precise date is unknown. The site was recorded by Coyne in 2000 and sits within a broader landscape of relict field walls, which together suggest a period of organised agricultural activity on these slopes that has since been entirely overtaken by bog and heather.

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Pete F
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