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Fairy fort / earthen ringfort in Ballycummisk

Fairy fort / earthen ringfort

What is recorded here

Fairy fort in Ballycummisk is a circular earthen enclosure forty-four metres across, with a bank rising three and a quarter metres on a north-facing pasture slope. A gap marks the eastern entrance, cultivation ridges cross the interior, and a small stone mound sits at the centre where local tradition imagines an underground passage. The shape suggests human making, but the story belongs to fairy belief, human memory and the quiet strangeness of places that refuse ordinary explanation.
In pasture, on N-facing slope. Circular area (44m N-S; 42m E-W) enclosed by earthen bank (max. H 3.25m), best preserved W->SE; external fosse (D 0.35m) S->E, enclosed by field fence W->N. Gap in bank to ENE (Wth 2.8m). Interior crossed by cultivation ridges on N-S axis; circular hut site (3m N-S; 3m E-W) close to inside of N bank; mound of stones (2m N-S; 2.4m E-W) at centre; local tradition of Man-made underground passage (CO140-049002-) in centre. The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Cork. Volume 1: West Cork' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1992). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Date of upload/revision: 14 January 2009

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What survives
Recorded monument

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