Hut site, Gleann Fán, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Gleann Fán, Co. Kerry

On the lower southern slopes of the Mount Eagle and Beennacouma ridge in Gleann Fán, a small cluster of stone foundations sits in open mountain terrain, easy to overlook and difficult to date with certainty.

Known as Clochán Bán, the site is a clochán, a dry-stone beehive hut of a type associated with early medieval monastic and secular life along the Dingle Peninsula, though the name here attaches to something more complex than a single cell.

The principal structure is a roughly circular foundation, 3.5 metres in diameter, with an entrance at the north-west that leads into a rectangular dry-stone built chamber measuring 2 by 1.5 metres internally. The walls survive to around 0.6 metres in height and are approximately 0.75 metres wide, giving a sense of solidity despite the roofless, ruined state of the whole. What makes the arrangement particularly curious is a detail recorded by the scholar R.A.S. Macalister in 1899: he noted a third circular structure, just 0.9 metres in diameter, positioned on the north side of the communicating passage between the other two elements. A feature that small could have served as a storage recess or some kind of subsidiary cell, though the notes leave its purpose open. The combination of circular and rectangular forms joined by a passage is an unusual configuration even by the varied standards of early Irish stone architecture on the Corca Dhuibhne peninsula, a part of Kerry long recognised for its exceptional concentration of early Christian and prehistoric remains.

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