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What Was a Clochán? Ireland's 1,400-Year Stone Huts Built Without a Single Nail

Medieval Wisdom

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On a bare rock island twelve kilometers off the coast of Ireland, medieval monks built six stone huts with no mortar, no nails, and no timber. Fourteen hundred years and countless Atlantic storms later, five of them are still standing — and still waterproof. This is the clochán, and the engineering behind it challenges everything we think we know about modern roofing.

Sources
Clochán — Wikipedia and referenced archaeological sources
Skellig Michael — UNESCO World Heritage Site documentation
Skellig Michael — Wikipedia and Annals of Inisfallen / Annals of the Four Masters
Gallarus Oratory engineering analysis — gallarusoratory.ie
Roger Stalley, "Systems of Construction: The Corbelled Buildings" — Columbia University Irish Architecture Project
Foti et al., "On the mechanics of corbelled domes" — Research on Engineering Structures & Materials, 2017
The Stone Trust — Masterclass: Theory of Corbelling
Atlas Obscura — Fahan Beehive Huts, County Kerry
Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae — Irish Beehive Huts [blog with archaeological citations]
Críth Gablach — early Irish law text (7th-8th century) [VERIFY exact provisions on clochán]
Modern roofing lifespan data — Fixr.com , Angi, This Old House, Roof Maxx
Roof Maxx — asphalt shingle quality decline and class action lawsuits [VERIFY specific lawsuit details]
medieval Irish architecture, Skellig Michael beehive huts, dry stone corbelling technique

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00:00 DROP A COMMENT
01:47 A Monastery on a Cliff
03:58 How to Build a Dome Without Mortar
06:45 Surviving on a Rock in the Atlantic
09:54 Four Hundred Beehive Huts on a Hillside
13:50 What We Lost
17:31 Why the Principles Still Matter

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20 Comments

@wms72 6 months ago

They're like stone igloos

@raygiordano1045 6 months ago

I know a lot of folks that think our ancestors were kind of dumb because they didn't have smart phones, but as is so often the case, once you look into it, they were very smart.

@jonmurraymurray5512 6 months ago

My dad replaced his roof with a metal one after a hailstorm. They put it right on top of the shingles. Energy costs went down and when he left us, it made the house easier to sell.

@tomprivate3362 6 months ago

I grew up helping my grandfather build "dry" stone walls. By the time I was 6 or 7 I was big enough to carry a smallish stone. When I went off to college I lived with a cousin. I built several dry stone walls for him. The neighbors were impressed by what they saw.....I had raided their field stone piles for suitable stone. I ended up building more walls for them. I built 3 stone retaining walls for driveways up the the hay mow level. When I go back to visit I look and 50 years later 2 of them are still in place, the third, the entire barn was bulldozed flat to make a large flat lawn for the recently moved in family. The smaller stone walls for culverts have held up well.
Building a good wall requires looking at the stones and fitting them together so that everything locks together. It is training the eye and the brain to work with the hands. A good wall will last generations.

@phlebgrl6064 6 months ago (edited)

I lived in rural Sullivan County, NY on farmland property surrounded by miles of old stone walls built decades ago by farmers to separate their land and livestock. The stones are stacked perfectly fitted to each other. You can identify every single part of a stone wall that has undergone recent repairs. The level of perfection cannot be replicated and always stands out from the rest of the wall, it’s really impressive! Made great homes for snakes!

@mrsillywalk 6 months ago

As a child, [ I am now 78] on holiday in Kerry I repaired a Beehive Hut for something to do.

@gstan471 6 months ago

You asked if anyone had personally built with stone. I installed an underground storm shelter using stone. The shelter is a ten foot diameter ABS plastic sphere with integral stairs and metal door. Once the shelter was buried in soil I covered it with a layer of irregularly shaped sandstone stones each approximately 6-16 inches in diameter. They provide a stable roof which won’t erode quickly and which will reduce the impact oof falling trees and other tornado debris.

@coreydemarce4652 6 months ago

I've built hundreds of feet of stone walls, dry and mortared. Free standing stone arches are the most fun.

@donunlisted9367 6 months ago

I grew up helping my grandparent's maintain dry stone walls that made a flower planters around her house.

I'm sure I'm not an expert, but it was fun to help.

@Shabbyrosecottage12 6 months ago

They look like small stone castles or fortresses with those slits for archers

@brianquinn1286 6 months ago

I built a stone fire pit in my back yard about fifteen years ago. Still there and it still works.

@FrostFireLore 6 months ago

I agree. Technology changes the tools we use, but it doesn’t mean people in the past lacked intelligence. Surviving with limited resources often required far more practical knowledge and problem-solving than we realize today.

@PeterMarsh001 6 months ago

Across the front of my home yard there was a series of terraces which I held back with dry stone walling,about 50 tonnes of rock in total. The stone came in rectangular chunks and so didn’t need dressing to fit together. It was a thoroughly satisfying job. Now, 40 years later i have had to repair a couple of bulges but overall the structure is still standing and in good shape.

@earlwarren2265 6 months ago

I learned quite abit from this video. I'm 76 now and I believe these stone clochan's will be around for thousands of years from now.

@Gdroku 6 months ago

I built a doghouse with this technique using flagstone

@marena3511 6 months ago

I've made swails, rock retaining walls which collect soil eroding from hillside paths, to terrace parts of the hill for gardens. I would rake leaves from the past and from the trees growing there, add kitchen compost and manure from local farms and ranches to build soil in the swails. The rocks had to be moved anyway to make paths smooth enough for the wheelbarrow. Controlled erosion.