Hut site, Gleann Fán, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Gleann Fán, Co. Kerry

On a south-east sloping field of rough mountain pasture beside the Glanfahan river in the Dingle Peninsula, a cluster of small stone structures sits in a configuration that suggests not a single building but an entire organised settlement, compressed into a remarkably tight space.

The site is known as Clochán Ais, and what makes it quietly unusual is the sheer complexity of what survives: not one corbelled hut but several distinct chambers of varying shapes, connected and abutting one another, with a rectangular structure running between them like a corridor or pen. Clocháns are the traditional corbelled dry-stone beehive huts of the west of Ireland, built without mortar by stacking flat stones so that each course projects slightly inward until the walls meet overhead, a technique that can produce a remarkably weathertight interior from nothing but fieldstone and patience.

The northernmost structure is a circular corbelled hut, roughly 3.6 metres in diameter and 1.4 metres high, with a small oval annex opening off its north-west side. Its interior has been subdivided at some point for use as a sheep-shelter, a fate common to old clocháns, which continue to serve practical purposes long after their original occupants have gone. Abutting this hut to the south-east are three small chambers, circular, sub-rectangular, and sub-circular in plan, the largest measuring 1.8 metres internally. A narrow rectangular drystone structure, just 2.5 by 0.9 metres and only 0.6 metres high, sits between this group and a further corbelled structure to the south, this second hut being somewhat smaller at 2.05 metres in diameter but slightly taller at 1.75 metres, with a lintelled entrance opening south-east into a small forecourt. The description of the site was published by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, a landmark survey of one of the most archaeologically dense landscapes in Ireland.

The site lies in mountain pasture to the west of the Glanfahan river in Gleann Fán, and the terrain is rough underfoot. The various structures are best appreciated by moving slowly around the perimeter of the whole group, since the relationship between the chambers, the rectangular linking element, and the two main corbelled huts only becomes clear once the full extent of the complex is visible. The walls of the southern hut in particular, standing to 1.75 metres, give a real sense of the original interior volume, modest by any standard but sufficient for shelter, storage, or whatever seasonal purpose the site once served.

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