Hut site, Gleann Fán, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Gleann Fán, Co. Kerry

On the southern slopes of Beennacouma, in the rough and rocky terrain of Gleann Fán, two small circular walls sit so close together that they were probably once a single conjoined structure.

Known as Clochán an Eidhne, the remains are modest almost to the point of invisibility, with foundations surviving to a height of less than a metre, but the form they preserve is ancient and immediately recognisable to anyone familiar with the early Christian landscape of the Dingle Peninsula.

A clochán is a drystone beehive hut, built without mortar by laying corbelled stones in tightening circles until the roof closes overhead. They are associated most often with early medieval monastic life, where monks used them as individual cells, though secular and pastoral uses are also well attested. The two huts at Clochán an Eidhne measure roughly 3.5 metres and 2.8 metres in diameter, placing them at the smaller end of the known range. What survives today amounts to little more than a low rubble outline, recorded and documented by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, a landmark regional study that catalogued dozens of similarly overlooked sites across this remarkably dense archaeological landscape.

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