Clochan, Baile Na Bhfionnúrach, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Clochan, Baile Na Bhfionnúrach, Co. Kerry

Two of the three dry-stone huts at Baile na bhFionnúrach are joined together in the shape of a figure of eight, an arrangement that is quietly arresting once you understand what you are looking at.

These are clocháns, corbelled stone cells built without mortar, in which each course of stones projects slightly inward over the one below until the walls meet at a single capstone. They are associated throughout Kerry and the wider Atlantic coast with early medieval monastic and agricultural settlement, though their precise dates are notoriously difficult to pin down without excavation. The three here sit in a rough row, and the pairing of two into a single conjoined structure suggests a deliberate plan rather than casual accumulation.

The clocháns lie immediately to the south of the entrance to a cashel, the ringfort-like enclosure known as Cathair Fionnuragh or Cathair a Bhoghasin. A cashel is a roughly circular enclosure defined by a stone wall rather than an earthen bank, and such enclosures were typically used as farmsteads or places of refuge during the early medieval period. Excavation work reported by E. Gibbons in 1998 noted that a direct relationship between the clocháns and the cashel cannot be ruled out, which is a cautious but significant observation. Their position just outside and to the east of the entrance, rather than scattered at random across the surrounding landscape, points toward a functional or at least chronological connection with the enclosure itself.

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