Building, Baile Na Habha, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Utility Structures

Building, Baile Na Habha, Co. Kerry

On the lower western slopes of the Brandon mountain range, just east of Tiduff village on the Dingle Peninsula, a rectangular outline in the earth sits in uncertain relationship with its neighbour, a burial ground known locally as a calluragh.

A calluragh is a type of informal or unofficial burial enclosure, typically used for unbaptised infants or others excluded from consecrated ground, and the one here is a recognised enclosure in its own right. The building beside it is something else entirely, and what exactly that something is remains an open question.

The structure, roughly 16.2 metres east to west and 9 metres north to south, makes itself known through a combination of field walls, grass-grown mounds, and earthfast stones, the kind of quiet, half-submerged presence that rewards close attention on the ground. It appears to be divided internally into two sections, though the fabric is incomplete enough that this reading is tentative. What it was used for, who built it, and whether it had any connection to the burial ground just metres to its west are questions that J. Cuppage's 1986 archaeological survey of the Corca Dhuibhne region, the Dingle Peninsula, recorded without being able to resolve. The relationship between the building and the calluragh, as Cuppage noted, is simply not known. That uncertainty is not a gap waiting to be filled so much as a feature of the place itself, a structure whose purpose has been absorbed by the landscape around it, leaving only its outline and its proximity to a burial ground to prompt speculation.

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Pete F
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