Clochan, Fán, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Settlement Sites

Clochan, Fán, Co. Kerry

On the lower southern slopes of Mount Eagle, overlooking Dingle Bay, there was once a circular enclosure containing four clochans, the small dry-stone beehive huts associated with early medieval monastic and farming life in the west of Ireland.

The site was recorded as a "Fort" on the Fair Plan, the detailed field drawings prepared during the original Ordnance Survey of Ireland, and was duly marked on the first edition of the OS map. By the time anyone thought to look more carefully, it was already gone.

The enclosure carries the reference KE052-246 in the archaeological record of the Dingle Peninsula, and its existence is known primarily through J. Cuppage's 1986 survey, "Corca Dhuibhne: Dingle Peninsula Archaeological Survey," a landmark study of a peninsula extraordinarily dense with prehistoric and early Christian remains. Four clochans within a single circular enclosure would have made this a reasonably substantial cluster, suggesting communal or agricultural use rather than a solitary hermitage. The label "Fort" on the Fair Plan reflects the nineteenth-century surveyor's instinct to categorise any enclosure in such terms, though the presence of clochans points more plausibly toward a settled domestic or religious function. What caused the site to disappear between its first mapping and the present day is unrecorded, though land clearance, stone robbing for field walls, and agricultural improvement account for the loss of countless such features across Kerry.

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