Hut site, Fán, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the south-eastern slopes of Mount Eagle, above the townland of Fán on the Dingle Peninsula, a small cluster of stone foundations sits quietly in the landscape.
What makes the arrangement unusual is its internal logic: two structures are conjoined, connected by a communicating passage, and between them they cover different geometric plans. The southern structure is circular, roughly 3.5 metres in diameter, with an entrance opening outward to the south. The northern structure is probably D-shaped, considerably smaller at around 1.7 by 1.7 metres. The walls survive to about a metre in height. A short distance to the south-east, the faint outlines of a possible third structure, around 2.25 metres across, suggest that what remains today may be only part of a larger original grouping.
This part of the Dingle Peninsula, known in Irish as Corca Dhuibhne, is extraordinarily dense with early remains. Hut sites of this kind, sometimes associated with early medieval or prehistoric settlement, typically consist of dry-stone walling laid out in circular or sub-rectangular forms, often clustered in small groupings that reflect the working rhythms of pastoral or agricultural life. The conjoined plan here, with its internal passage linking the two chambers, points to a deliberate architectural relationship between the spaces rather than simple adjacency. The site was recorded as part of the Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey, published by J. Cuppage in 1986, which remains a foundational reference for the pre-Norman landscape of this peninsula.