Souterrain, Baile Na Bhfionnúrach, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Settlement Sites

Souterrain, Baile Na Bhfionnúrach, Co. Kerry

On the lower slopes of the Brandon mountain range in County Kerry, a pair of ancient circular huts sit just 5.5 metres apart, their stones long since slumped and partly swallowed by a later field wall.

What makes the site quietly remarkable is not the huts themselves, ruined as they are, but a small passage tucked into the eastern section of the larger, south-eastern structure. That passage, measuring at least 1.1 metres long, 0.55 metres wide, and only 0.25 metres high at its opening, is almost certainly the entrance to a souterrain, an underground chamber or tunnel built in early medieval Ireland, typically for storage or concealment. It is roofed with lintels, flat slabs laid horizontally across the walls, a construction method common to the type. The opening is now blocked.

The site sits within the Corca Dhuibhne region, the Dingle Peninsula, an area extraordinarily dense with early medieval and prehistoric remains. The two huts, set apart on the hillside, suggest a small settlement, perhaps a farmstead, from a period when corbelled stone structures and subterranean passages were practical responses to the landscape and the times. The souterrain here was first noted and described in J. Cuppage's 1986 archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, a detailed catalogue of the extraordinary concentration of monuments across this part of west Kerry. That survey remains a foundational document for understanding the human geography of the area across several millennia.

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