Hut site, Fán, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the southern slopes of Mount Eagle in County Kerry, not far from the Glanfahan river, a small cluster of drystone structures sits in rough mountain terrain, easy to overlook and difficult to date.
The largest of these is a circular corbelled hut, corbelling being a building technique in which stone courses are laid so that each projects slightly inward over the one below, eventually meeting at the top without the need for mortar or wooden framing. This particular hut measures somewhere between 3.3 and 3.8 metres across and stands two metres high, with walls over a metre thick. Inside, five small niches are cut into the wall surface, each one a neat pocket in the stonework. About seven metres to the east sits a smaller rectangular structure, also corbelled and drystone-built, which makes use of a natural rock outcrop as both its eastern wall and part of its roof, a practical economy that gives the building an almost geological quality, as if it grew from the hillside rather than was placed upon it.
Judith Cuppage, writing in 1986 as part of a survey of the Dingle Peninsula, recorded this site alongside five other small structures scattered in the immediate vicinity, all in varying states of preservation. Cuppage suggested that the smaller buildings were probably associated with sheep farming practices in the area, implying a working landscape of seasonal or occasional use rather than permanent habitation. The main hut, set on a level terrace amid the surrounding rough terrain on the eastern side of the Glanfahan river, is the most substantial of the group. Whether the circular hut served a similar agricultural function or represents an earlier phase of occupation is not firmly established. The Dingle Peninsula holds an exceptional concentration of early medieval and prehistoric remains, and corbelled drystone construction has a long history in this part of Kerry, making it genuinely difficult to assign any such structure to a single period without excavation.