Slea Head.
Fahan has many antiquities, including cave dwellings, stone beehive huts, stone monuments and forts.
Dunbeg Fort
Dunbeg Fort
Dunbeg Fort ( ga, An Dún Beag) is a promontory fort built in the Iron Age near the modern village of Ventry in County Kerry, Ireland.
Location
Dunbeg Fort is located on a rocky promontory just south of Slea Head on the Dingle Peninsula, loo ...
is located on a rocky promontory looking over
Dingle Bay
Dingle Bay (''Bá an Daingin'' in Irish) is a bay located in County Kerry, western Ireland. The outer parts of the Dingle Peninsula and Dingle Bay mark one of the westernmost points of mainland Ireland. The harbour town of Dingle lies on the n ...
to the south. The cliffs have eroded since it was built, and much of the fort has been lost to the sea.
The fort's wall cut off access to the triangular promontory, which was later occupied by a single large "beehive" hut.
A visitor center at the site includes audiovisual displays, an information and craft room and a restaurant and café.
The date at which the Dunbeg fort was built is very uncertain, although its structure resembles other Western Stone Forts. It may have been built around the same time as
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age ( Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostl ...
blockhouse forts in Scotland such as the
Crosskirk Fort
Crosskirk Broch was a fortification near the present day hamlet of Crosskirk near Thurso, Caithness, Scotland. After thorough archaeological exploration it was destroyed in 1972 since the site had become unsafe due to sea erosion. The site was ...
in Caithness and the
Clickimin Fort
The Broch of Clickimin (also Clickimin or Clickhimin Broch) is a large, well-preserved but restored broch in Lerwick in Shetland, Scotland (). Originally built on an island in Clickimin Loch, it was approached by a stone causeway. The broch i ...
,
Ness of Burgi Fort
The Ness of Burgi fort is an iron-age promontory fort in the Old Scatness archaeological site on the Ness of Burgi, a narrow finger of land reaching south from the Scat Ness in the far south of the island of Mainland, Shetland in Scotland.
...
and
Huxter Fort
Huxter Fort is an Iron Age fortification on the island of Whalsay, in the Shetland islands of Scotland, dating to around 300 BC. It is on an islet in the Loch of Huxter, connected to the shore by a causeway.
Origins
The fort was probably b ...
in Shetland.
Clochán
The collection of beehive houses at Fahan is said to be the most remarkable in Ireland.
The date of the Fahan clochán is uncertain, since stone huts with this design have been built from
Neolithic
The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several p ...
times to the twentieth century.
Some of the earliest may have been built by hermit monks.
However, it is thought that most of the clochán in this grouping dates to the twelfth century,
when
Norman
Norman or Normans may refer to:
Ethnic and cultural identity
* The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries
** People or things connected with the Norm ...
invaders forced farmers from more prosperous areas to move to the marginal lands of the
Dingle Peninsula
The Dingle Peninsula ( ga, Corca Dhuibhne; anglicised as Corkaguiny, the name of the corresponding barony) is the northernmost of the major peninsulas in County Kerry. It ends beyond the town of Dingle at Dunmore Head, the westernmost point ...
.
George Victor Du Noyer described the settlement when he visited in 1858. In his view the nearby
Dunbeg Fort
Dunbeg Fort ( ga, An Dún Beag) is a promontory fort built in the Iron Age near the modern village of Ventry in County Kerry, Ireland.
Location
Dunbeg Fort is located on a rocky promontory just south of Slea Head on the Dingle Peninsula, loo ...
had been built to protect the community.
However, the fort was built before 800 AD, and most likely during the
Stone Age before the Christian Era.
Some of the stone huts in the Fahan group lay within stone
ring fort
Ringforts, ring forts or ring fortresses are circular fortified settlements that were mostly built during the Bronze Age up to about the year 1000. They are found in Northern Europe, especially in Ireland. There are also many in South Wales ...
s.
The and clochán formed two clusters, or "cities", of the Fahan group.
460 have been counted, of which 414 are clochán.
Most of them appear to be ancient, although some date to the middle of the nineteenth century.
Their sizes range from to across, mostly round but sometime D-shaped or oval.
They would have had corbelled stone roofs, giving them the shape of beehives.
Famine cottage
The Kavanaugh Famine Cottage is one of Fahan's tourist attractions. Once it had two rooms and a loft.
The restored building has three rooms and two outhouses.
It contains a selection of furniture and artifacts from the period of the
Great Irish Famine.
The cottage is on the north side of the R559 road, just west of the car park for Dunbeg Fort.
Gallery
File:Dunbeg-Promontory-Fort-2012.JPG, Dunbeg promontory fort
File:Fahan, Famine Cottage - geograph.org.uk - 259433.jpg, Famine Cottage - a museum of the Famine Years between 1845 and 1853
File:Fahan Farm Buildings - geograph.org.uk - 86064.jpg, Fahan Farm Buildings
File:Steep pastures near Fahan - geograph.org.uk - 1576967.jpg, Steep pastures near Fahan
File:Fahan - geograph.org.uk - 259467.jpg, View taken from the R559 road
File:Dingle beehive hut.JPG, Typical Clochán on the Dingle Peninsula
References
Citations
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Archaeological sites in County Kerry