Hut site, Kilgobnet, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
At Kilgobnet in County Kerry, there survive the remains of two circular cells, the kind of small stone structures associated with early Christian monastic and hermitic life in Ireland.
These cells, sometimes called beehive huts or clocháns, were built without mortar, relying instead on carefully corbelled stonework, where each course of stones projects slightly inward over the one below until the walls meet at the top. Their circular plan and drystone construction are characteristic of the early medieval period, when solitary religious communities in the west of Ireland favoured simple, durable shelters suited to the austere landscape around them.
The site at Kilgobnet is catalogued as one of a pair of such structures, recorded by O'Sullivan and Sheehan in their 1996 archaeological inventory of south-west Kerry. Kilgobnet itself sits in an area of the Iveragh Peninsula with a notable concentration of early ecclesiastical remains, a landscape where saint's names, holy wells, and ancient enclosures cluster together in ways that suggest sustained religious activity across several centuries. The pairing of two cells rather than a single one hints at a small community rather than a lone hermit, though the precise date and context of these particular structures remains a matter of careful inference rather than documented record.