Hut site, Gleann Fán, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
Above the Slea Head road on the Dingle Peninsula, in the rough mountain terrain of Gleann Fán, a cluster of small stone structures sits largely unannounced against the rock.
The site goes by the name Clochán na nÓgh, and what makes it quietly unusual is the way its builders worked with the landscape rather than imposing anything upon it. Instead of clearing inconvenient outcrops, they built around them and into them, incorporating large natural rock faces as ready-made walls. The result is a group of structures that seem to grow from the hillside rather than having been placed upon it.
Three distinct elements make up the site. The first is a D-shaped drystone structure, roughly three metres across and just over a metre high, whose straight eastern wall is formed in part by a natural rock outcrop. A little uphill and to the north-east, a much larger rock outcrop anchors a second D-shaped enclosure, wider at around four and a half metres, with walls nearly a metre thick. Further downhill to the south sits a smaller oval foundation, built using corbelled drystone construction, a technique in which stones are laid in overlapping courses that gradually close inward to form a roof or vault, and this smallest structure retains a wall niche at ground level, a recessed pocket built into the base of the wall whose original purpose is not recorded. The structures were documented by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey, which catalogued the extraordinary density of early remains across this part of the Corca Dhuibhne region. Clocháns, as this type of small dry-built hut is generally known, are associated with early medieval settlement and monastic life in the west of Ireland, though assigning a precise date or function to any individual example without excavation is rarely straightforward.