The History of the “City of Fahan”
Fahan – (Fán in Irish) – a hillside village along the Slea Head Drive has been inhabited for almost 6,000 years. The first settlers in this village were nomadic hunters and gatherers who foraged on the coast for their food. Later Stone Age man, Bronze Age and Iron Age man were to build their defensive forts, erect their dwelling houses (Clocháns, or Beehive Huts), and toil the land for the first time. The Celtic population arrived in the couple of hundred years before the birth of Christ. In the centuries that followed, the peninsula was to be visited by Vikings, Normans and English.
Each wave of settlers left their mark on the locality and it may be said that the locality left its mark on them. They sustained life here only with great difficulty. Sometimes they warred with each other; at other times they lived side by side in peace and in neighbourliness. At one stage there were over 400 of these drystone monuments surviving, prompting one antiquarian in the 19th century to refer to the area as the "City of Fahan".