House - indeterminate date, Coill Bhaile Uí Fhlaithimh, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

House

House – indeterminate date, Coill Bhaile Uí Fhlaithimh, Co. Kerry

On the lower north-western slopes of Cummeen mountain in County Kerry, overlooking the valley of the Owencashla river, sits a small rectangular ruin that nobody has been able to date with any confidence.

It is built entirely without mortar, a technique known as drystone construction, in which stones are selected and stacked so that their own weight holds them in place. The walls survive to just over a metre in height at their best-preserved points, though the interior has filled with rubble over time, reducing the visible internal rise to less than half a metre. The outer face of the walling leans slightly inward, a detail that suggests some care in the original build, even if no record survives of who built it or when.

What makes the structure quietly unusual is not just its uncertain age but its entrance arrangement. The doorway is set into the south wall, which at that point is a substantial 1.64 metres thick, and leading away from it to the west-south-west is a passageway some 5.5 metres long and nearly 1.5 metres wide, defined by large stones placed on their sides rather than stacked flat. This kind of elongated entrance passage, funnelling approach and departure through a defined corridor, is a feature associated with a range of building traditions across the Atlantic fringe of Ireland, though without a date for this particular structure it is difficult to say more. The placename attached to the wider area, Caherbaun or An Chathair Bhán, meaning the white stone fort, hints at a landscape with older, more substantial remains nearby. The house was recorded and described in J. Cuppage's 1986 archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, which remains a foundational reference for the archaeology of Corca Dhuibhne.

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