Clochan, Cill Mhuirbhigh, Co. Galway

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Settlement Sites

Clochan, Cill Mhuirbhigh, Co. Galway

At the foot of the hill carrying the stone fort of Dún Beag on Inis Mór, three lumps in the earth are all that remain of what was once a three-chambered clochan, a type of dry-stone beehive hut traditionally built without mortar, corbelled inward until the walls meet at a dome overhead.

Most visitors to this part of Inis Mór pass by without a second glance, seeing only grassy mounds, but the geometry of the remains tells a more specific story.

When the geologist George Henry Kinahan recorded the structure in 1869, he described it as a three-chambered clochan, a relatively unusual configuration. What can be identified on the ground today consists of a penannular, or nearly complete ring-shaped, grassed-over mound measuring roughly 3.8 metres by 3.6 metres, with a central depression and a gap opening to the north. Immediately to its west lies a second collapsed mound, smaller at 3.4 metres by 3.2 metres, and a metre to the north a third, considerably larger oval mound stretching some 18 metres by 6 metres, which may represent the third chamber Kinahan noted. Just to the east of this cluster sits a bullaun stone, a boulder or slab bearing one or more artificial cup-shaped hollows, often associated with early Christian or pre-Christian ritual use. The proximity of these features to one another, alongside the nearby fort, suggests this small area was a focus of activity across several periods. Tim Robinson noted the grouping in 1980, lending the cluster a place in the documented landscape of the island before even formal archaeological inventory work was completed.

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