Slea Head:
Slea Head is at the southwestern edge of the Dingle Peninsula, County Kerry and has pristine beaches, great scenery, and lots of archaeological remains.
Reask Monastic Site:
The Reask Monastic Site is an early Christian monastery which was in use from the 6th and the 12th century. It is enclosed by a roughly circular dry-stone wall and its interior is divided by a curving wall into two parts. The eastern part of the site is the oratory (a small church). The oratory, like the other buildings on the site, was built using dry-stone—that is, no mortar was used. The corbelled roof was also constructed from dry-stone.
Next to and under the oratory is an earlier cemetery with 42 graves arranged in two rows. The area around the oratory was used as a ceallúnach (a children’s burial ground) after the monastery was abandoned.
Large, circular beehive-shaped stone buildings, known as clocháns, were arranged in pairs in two cases and a small rectangular clochán was incorporated into the enclosing wall of the monastery. The beehive huts served as the homes of the monks.
Shown above is an artist’s conception of what the site would have looked like.
There are ten cross-inscribed stones at the site. The Reask Stone is decorated with a spiral design and carved with the letters DNE which stands for the Latin Domine (which means Lord). The designation Reask comes from the Irish An Riasc which means “The Marsh.” The original design on the stone is Celtic and probably dates to about 500 BCE. When Christianity arrived in Ireland it appropriated many pagan sites, symbols, deities, and ceremonies. The Reask stone had been originally carved with Celtic scrollwork and the Christians carved a Maltese-type cross over the Celtic scroll.
Small monastic communities such as Reask functioned as a sort of cottage industry which provided services, such as drying and grinding grain for local farmers. With the arrival of the Anglo-Normans in the 12th century, the small monastic communities were replaced by fairly large state and church governments.
When archaeological excavation started at the site in 1975, only a portion of the Reask Stone was visible on the surface. The rest of the site had been buried over the centuries since it was abandoned.
Beehive Huts:
Gallarus Oratory:
The Gallarus Oratory is an early church building shaped like an overturned boat. Its dry-stone construction (no mortar was used) has stood completely watertight for more than 1,300 years.
The stone features above the door (shown above) provided an attachment for the door.