On May 3rd, members of the Fahy and Kelleher family gathered at Drombeg Stone Circle in Glandore to mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Dr Eddie (E.M) Fahy, the archaeologist who excavated the site in 1957/58.
Eddie’s career began in 1944 as assistant curator in the newly opened Cork Public Museum in Fitzgerald’s Park.
There, he worked with Prof M J O’Kelly (Prof. of Archaeology at UCC), and studied for a BA by attending night classes.
An MA followed, while he was still working full time at the museum and carrying out excavations in the summer months.
While excavating a rinfort at Carrigillihy, he lodged at Mrs Farrer’s guest house (and bakery) at The Pier in Glandore.
There he was introduced to Maureen Kelleher, who was home from her job in Dublin to visit her parents John James and Annie at The Cross, Glandore.
They were married in 1955, and after that, he needed little encouragement to carry out further excavations in West Cork.
It is his work on the Bronze Age stone circles of West Cork (about 3000 years old) that is best known.
He worked there in the summers of 1957, on the stone circle, and 1958 when he worked on the hut sites to the west.
Local men Connie Donovan (Maulmoreen) Tim John O’Donoghue (Aughatubber) and Denis O’Mahony (The Cross, Glandore) worked with him, and were involved in raising the large stones that had fallen and were exposed by the ‘dig’.
Charcoal from the circle was tested using carbon-14 dating, and the results were that the object dated from about 500AD.
This was very surprising, as stone circles are usually dated much earlier.
In the 1990s, Prof. O’Brien of UCC had the same samples tested again and this time, a date of 1111-788 BC was confirmed.
Drombeg is now a national monument, the land having been given to the state by the late Barty Whelton of Drombeg House.
Eddie went on to become a lecturer in the geography department at UCC, and worked as an archaeologist in the summer.
He excavated the O’Sullivan Bere stronghold of Dunboy Castle in the early 1970s but it was to Drombeg, to a small ring fort across the road from the stone circle, that he returned for his last excavation in 1974, before his sudden death in 1975 at age 52.
He also excavated stone circles at Bohonagh and Reenascreena, but it is Drombeg that every year seems to draw more visitors, and there is no end of theories about who built it, and what it was used for.
