Clochan, Murorgán, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On a steep hillside above Brandon Bay in County Kerry, a cluster of ruined stone structures sits within a field crossed by old and newly cut trackways.
The remains are difficult to classify, not because they are obscure in type, but because centuries of collapse and disturbance have blurred their original form. There are three or four clochans, the small, beehive-shaped dry-stone cells associated with early Irish monasticism, along with three piles of stones that may once have served as penitential stations, points along a devotional circuit where pilgrims would pause to pray or prostrate themselves.
The site is known as Turrasyline or Turas Fhlainn, a name that points directly to its purpose. A turas is a pattern or pilgrimage walk, typically performed on a saint's feast day, and this one was still being carried out within living memory. The circuit included a visit to Tobar Fhlainn, a holy well at the base of the sea-cliffs roughly 500 metres to the north, and local tradition also recalls a church somewhere in the vicinity. Together, the well, the turas, and the stone remains suggest an early ecclesiastical site dedicated to Saint Flann, though no definitive identification has been made. The best-preserved of the structures, the westernmost one, is sub-rectangular and measures roughly 3.45 metres by 2.55 metres internally. Its north-west wall is curved in outline and built in the corbelled style, where flat stones are laid so that each course projects slightly inward, eventually meeting at the top without mortar. That section still stands to 1.4 metres. The other walls are more crudely built and barely reach 0.6 metres, suggesting at least two distinct phases of construction. The wall tops are flush with the surrounding ground level, meaning the exterior stonework has vanished entirely below earth and rubble. Tucked into the rubble just south-east of the structure is a small dry-stone niche, roughly 65 centimetres wide and 45 centimetres high, whose function remains unknown. The outline of a second structure can just be made out in the collapsed stonework adjoining the south-west wall, though its shape and dimensions are no longer legible. The survey of the site was first recorded in detail by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Dingle Peninsula Archaeological Survey.