Clochan, Gleann Fán, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Settlement Sites

Clochan, Gleann Fán, Co. Kerry

On the southern slopes of Mount Eagle in County Kerry, a group of four stone huts sits on a rocky east-west terrace, looking out over the Dingle Peninsula.

Two of them still stand to something approaching their original height; the other two have collapsed into their own foundations. What makes the cluster unusual is not simply its age but its internal logic: two of the huts connect directly to one another through a lintelled passage, while the other two foundations are physically attached to the group but have no internal communication with it. It is an arrangement that raises more questions than it answers.

Clochán Scológ, as the site is known locally, belongs to a tradition of corbelled drystone building found across the western seaboard of Ireland, particularly on the Dingle Peninsula. A clochán is a small dry-stone hut built using the corbelling technique, in which courses of flat stones are laid so that each projects slightly inward over the one below, eventually meeting at the top without the need for mortar or timber. The southern hut here is oval in plan, roughly 3.7 to 4.1 metres across and still standing to a height of 2.2 metres, and it is approached from the east by a 3.75-metre passage defined by upright stone slabs. Its entrance is now blocked. The northern hut, roughly D-shaped and entered from the south through the connecting passage, stands to 1.3 metres and once contained a recess at its southeast side. When Macalister recorded the site in 1899, he described this recess as a narrow chamber measuring approximately 1.45 by 0.45 metres, though it has since been suggested it may have originally served as an exit passage to the open air. The two ruined foundations attached to the north of this hut are orientated east-west rather than north-south, creating an asymmetry whose purpose is not clear. J. Cuppage documented the group as part of the comprehensive Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey published in 1986, and that record remains the primary source for the site's measured details.

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