Clochan, Gleann Fán, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Clochan, Gleann Fán, Co. Kerry

In Gleann Fán, a quiet valley on the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry, the remains of an early stone structure have largely disappeared into the landscape.

What was once a double clochan, a pair of the dry-stone corbelled huts associated with early Christian and pre-Christian settlement in the west of Ireland, along with an attached forecourt, has been reduced to very little that the untrained eye would recognise at all.

The structure was recorded in 1899 by R.A.S. Macalister, the archaeologist and epigrapher who spent much of his career cataloguing the ancient monuments of Ireland. At the time of his survey, enough survived to identify it as a double example, meaning two of the beehive-shaped cells were joined together, with a forecourt area forming a defined entrance space. By the time later researchers revisited the site, that picture had changed considerably, and what Macalister documented has since deteriorated further. Clochans of this kind were once common across the Dingle Peninsula, a landscape unusually dense with early medieval remains, but survival is uneven and many have been robbed for building stone or simply collapsed over centuries of neglect.

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