Hut site, Killoe, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Killoe, Co. Kerry

On the Iveragh Peninsula in south Kerry, the remains of a small oval hut sit quietly in the southern half of an enclosure, marked on the second edition of the Ordnance Survey map under the Irish place-name Cloghaun, meaning a small stone structure or stony place.

That cartographic trace is now one of the more useful clues to its existence, because what survives on the ground is modest: a drystone shell, built without mortar, measuring roughly 5.3 metres by 4.2 metres internally, with walls averaging about a metre in thickness.

Drystone huts of this kind are scattered across the upland and coastal margins of Kerry, often associated with seasonal pastoral activity, though some have earlier origins. The construction method, fitting stone to stone without any binding material, is ancient and practical in equal measure, requiring skill in selecting and placing each course so the structure holds by its own weight and geometry. This particular example was recorded and described as part of a comprehensive archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan and published by Cork University Press in 1996, a volume that brought together a great deal of field evidence from one of Ireland's more archaeologically layered landscapes.

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