Clochan, Baile Na Bhfionnúrach, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
Three small stone huts arranged roughly in a row, two of them joined together in a figure-of-eight plan, sit just to the east of an ancient cashel in Ballynavenooragh in County Kerry.
That figure-of-eight arrangement is itself a curiosity: clocháns, the beehive-shaped dry-stone cells associated with early medieval monastic and settlement life in Ireland, are frequently found alone or in loose clusters, but the conjoined pair here suggests a more deliberate organisation, perhaps even a shared domestic or communal function that once connected the huts to one another and to the larger enclosure beside them.
The cashel itself, a type of stone-walled ringfort enclosing a farmstead or settlement, is known locally as Cathair Fionnuragh or Cathair a Bhoghasin. The three clocháns lie immediately south of its entrance, and excavation work reported by E. Gibbons in 1998 noted that a direct relationship between the huts and the cashel cannot be ruled out. That careful, provisional phrasing is worth pausing on: it does not confirm that the clocháns were built at the same time or by the same people who constructed the cashel, but it does suggest the spatial proximity is unlikely to be coincidental. The positioning, just outside the entrance, hints at a purposeful arrangement, whether the huts served as ancillary shelters, storage, or accommodation for people who lived and worked in relation to the cashel community.