Hut site, Gleann Fán, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
Above the Slea Head road on the Dingle Peninsula, in rough mountain terrain where the rock breaks through the ground at every turn, there is a small cluster of ancient stone structures known collectively as Clochán na nÓgh.
The name refers to a type of building that is almost synonymous with this corner of Kerry: a clochán is a drystone hut, usually corbelled, meaning its walls are built with stones that gradually overhang one another inward until they meet at the top, requiring no mortar and no timber. What makes this particular group unusual is not just the construction technique but the way its builders worked with the landscape rather than against it. Each of the three structures here incorporates a large natural rock outcrop directly into its fabric, using the mountain itself as a ready-made wall.
The group comprises three distinct elements arranged across a short stretch of slope. The largest is a D-shaped drystone enclosure, roughly 4.6 by 2 metres, built around a prominent rock outcrop that forms part of its wall and standing to a height of about 1.3 metres. A short distance downhill sits a smaller D-shaped structure, around 3.1 metres in diameter, similarly borrowing a natural outcrop for its straight eastern wall. Between or near these two is an oval foundation of corbelled drystone construction, smaller still at roughly 2.1 to 2.25 metres across, and notable for a small niche set into its wall at ground level, the kind of recess that may once have held a lamp, a vessel, or some object of everyday or devotional significance. The site was documented by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, a landmark piece of fieldwork for this densely layered region. No precise date of construction is given, but clocháin of this type are generally associated with early medieval or early Christian settlement, when small monastic or hermetic communities occupied remote Atlantic headlands.