House - indeterminate date, Páirc An Teampaill, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
House
In a valley on the Dingle Peninsula, tucked between the central mountain range and the Sea Hill ridge, a cluster of low earthen banks and shallow depressions marks the site of what were once domestic structures.
The date of their construction is unknown. What survives is not dramatic: walls reduced to ripples of earth and stone, the faintest negative impressions in the ground, entrance gaps that only become legible once you know to look for them. Yet together they constitute a small settlement, or the ghost of one, associated with the burial ground and church of Calluragh, known also as Teampall Mártain or An Teampall Liath, St Martin's Church.
Four rectangular structures have been identified at the site. The largest, orientated northeast to southwest, measures roughly eleven metres by four and a half internally, with its walls surviving as mounds up to 0.85 metres high; the outer face is still traceable in places. The others are smaller, their walls reduced to banks less than half a metre high, and one is recorded only as a rectangular depression in the ground, around six metres by four, half a metre deep. A still smaller depression lies just two metres to its north. The survey from which this account is drawn was carried out by J. Cuppage and published in 1986 as part of the Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, a landmark regional study that catalogued hundreds of sites across this exceptionally dense archaeological landscape. The elevated position of the site, modest as the rise is, gives it an open outlook across the valley floor, which may partly explain why someone, at some unrecoverable point in time, chose to settle here beside the grey church.