Clochan, Na Gleannta Theas, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Clochan, Na Gleannta Theas, Co. Kerry

In the rough, rocky uplands of Na Gleannta Theas in County Kerry, a small stone structure sits in the landscape looking, from a distance, almost like a natural feature of the terrain.

It is not. This is a clochan, a type of early Irish dry-stone hut built using corbelling, a technique in which successive rings of stone are laid so that each slightly overhangs the one below, eventually closing at the top without mortar and without the need for any timber roof. The example here is circular, measures 3.45 metres in diameter and stands 2.1 metres high, with walls between 1.1 and 1.6 metres thick. Its east-facing entrance is lintelled and only a metre in height, meaning that anyone entering would have to stoop considerably.

What makes this particular clochan a little more telling about the lives of the people who once worked this mountain is the crude sheep-pen built against its north-east side. The combination suggests that the structure served a pastoral function at some point, perhaps as a seasonal shelter for a herdsman watching flocks on the high ground, a practice common enough in Irish upland farming long after the early medieval period when clochans are most closely associated. The site was recorded by J. Cuppage as part of the Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, published in 1986, which catalogued the extraordinary density of early remains across this part of Kerry.

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Pete F
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