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Fairy fort / earthen ringfort in An Chaisleach

Fairy fort / earthen ringfort

What is recorded here

Green chaos has strangled the fort, hiding its chambers beneath a living roof of thorns and shadow. Two earthen banks still guard the head of the Inny valley, their steep slopes warning against easy entry. The fort is not lost, only waiting for someone bold enough to walk its hidden floors.
Internal diam. 37m N-S, 28m E-W This overgrown bivallate rath is located on the lower SW slopes of Colly, at the head of the Inny river valley. The site consists of two earthen banks and a deep intervening fosse. The inner face of the inner bank slopes very gradually towards the interior of the site, giving an exaggerated basal width of 6.5m to the bank. The external face of this bank is revetted with random courses of block-like slabs, which may be a secondary feature. The bank falls 1.9m to the base of the 3.9m wide flat-bottomed fosse, which is choked in dense thicket. Both the fosse and the outer bank can only be traced intermittently along the E half of the site. The outer bank is almost completely obscured by overgrowth. It rises 1m above the fosse, is c. 2m wide and falls .5m on average to external ground level. Most of the rath's interior is covered in a tangled mass of trees and overgrowth and it is not clear if features are concealed underneath this. The above description is derived from A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan (compilers), 'The Iveragh peninsula: an archaeological survey of South Kerry'. Cork University Press (1996), no. 483. In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Date of upload: 28 July 2013

The monument record does not grant public access. Check the route and ask the landowner before entering private land.

What survives
Recorded monument

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