Hut site, Shronahiree More, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, at the southern end of a wider archaeological complex, the faint outline of a circular hut sits close enough to the ground that most walkers would step over it without a second thought.
What remains are the poorly preserved foundations, a rough ring of stone that once defined a living or working space barely 2.8 metres across internally, with a narrow entrance gap of around 1.1 metres opening towards the south-west. That south-westerly orientation is typical of early Irish hut sites, angled to catch light while offering some shelter from the prevailing Atlantic wind.
Circular stone huts of this kind are found across the upland and coastal landscapes of Kerry, often associated with seasonal settlement or agricultural activity. They belong to a broad tradition of dry-stone construction that spans prehistory into the early medieval period, though without excavation it is rarely possible to assign a precise date to any individual example. The site at Shronahiree More was recorded and described by archaeologists A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan in their 1996 survey of the Iveragh Peninsula, published by Cork University Press, which remains one of the most thorough catalogues of the region's field monuments. The hut forms part of a larger complex, though the surviving evidence at this particular structure is limited to its ground-level footprint.