Hut site, Baile Na Bhfionnúrach, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the lower slopes of the Brandon Mountain range in west Kerry, a small arrangement of low upright stones sits in the ground at a scale easy to overlook entirely.
Measuring roughly 4.7 by 3.7 metres, what remains forms a sub-rectangular outline, the probable base of an inner wall face from a structure once substantial enough to be recorded on the second edition Ordnance Survey map under the Irish term 'cloghaun', meaning a small stone hut or clochán. That earlier cartographic record is now the clearest evidence that something more coherent once stood here; the stones themselves, settled into a gentle north-west facing hillside, give little away.
A clochán is a dry-stone corbelled structure, built without mortar by stacking stones so that each course projects slightly inward until the walls meet overhead, a technique used across the Dingle Peninsula and the wider Corca Dhuibhne area from early medieval times onward, often associated with monastic or pastoral use. This particular example was documented by J. Cuppage in the 1986 archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, 'Corca Dhuibhne', by which point the structure had already been reduced to its present fragmentary condition. The site lies in the townland of Baile na bhFionnúrach, in the shadow of a mountain range that carries a dense concentration of early Christian and prehistoric remains, making the presence of even a ruined hut here unremarkable in one sense, though no less quietly evocative for that.