Hut site, Tulaigh Fhialáin, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Tulaigh Fhialáin, Co. Kerry

On a boggy rise above the upper Inny river in south Kerry, a small square structure of rough boulders sits within a circular enclosure, quietly resisting the peat that has built up around it over the centuries.

What makes it unusual is its shape: most early Irish hut sites are round, following a building tradition that persisted for millennia, so a square plan here is the kind of anomaly that tends to catch an archaeologist's eye. The entrance gap, just 1.5 metres wide, faces west, and the hut measures 4.4 metres across.

The site sits on the Iveragh Peninsula, the broad, mountainous finger of land in County Kerry that reaches out into the Atlantic and includes the famous ring of mountains enclosing Kenmare Bay. The upper reaches of the Inny river, close to which this structure lies, drain a remote and largely uninhabited upland landscape. The hut occupies the western side of what appears to be a circular enclosure or field boundary, suggesting it was once part of a small agricultural settlement, a single household perhaps, working marginal land at the edge of the cultivable world. The rough boulder construction, without any dressed stonework, points to a functional, unshowy building tradition common across Irish upland areas, though the precise date of this particular structure is not established.

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