Hut site, Teeromoyle, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, a set of stone foundations sits low in the landscape at Teeromoyle, the remains of a circular hut so modest in scale that it could easily be dismissed as a natural scatter of rock.
What distinguishes it is the deliberate arrangement of the stonework: a basal row of upright slabs lines the inner wall-face, each set at right angles to the wall axis, a construction technique that suggests careful, purposeful building rather than improvised shelter.
The structure is small even by the standards of early Irish hut sites. The interior diameter measures just 2.1 metres, with walls 0.8 metres wide, and a possible entrance, approximately 0.7 metres across, faces west. This kind of single-cell circular hut, sometimes associated with early medieval pastoral activity or monastic anchorites seeking isolation, turns up across the Kerry uplands, though few are as compactly proportioned as this one. The upright orthostatic slabs lining the interior, a detail noted by archaeologists A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan in their survey of South Kerry published by Cork University Press in 1996, point to a builder who knew the local tradition of dry-stone construction well enough to reinforce the base of the wall against the creep and settling of the ground beneath it.