Hut site, Gleann Fán, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the southern slopes of Beennacouma, in the rough and rocky terrain of Gleann Fán, two small stone structures sit joined together as though for warmth.
They are not dramatic ruins in any conventional sense, just the low foundations of a pair of conjoined drystone huts, the kind of thing you might step over without quite registering what you were looking at.
Drystone construction, which uses no mortar, relies entirely on the careful selection and layering of stone, and it was the dominant building technique across the Dingle Peninsula for centuries, from the early medieval period well into the post-medieval era. These two huts share a wall where they meet, one measuring roughly 2.7 by 2 metres across and the other approximately 3 metres, with surviving wall heights of 1.25 metres and 0.5 metres respectively. That difference in height suggests uneven survival rather than deliberate design, the terrain and centuries of slow collapse doing their work at different rates. The structures were recorded as part of the Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey published by J. Cuppage in 1986, a systematic effort to document the extraordinary concentration of early remains across the peninsula.