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Fairy fort / earthen ringfort in Banagher

Fairy fort / earthen ringfort

What is recorded here

Fairy forts are earthen rings built by people, though local story gives them to fairies because the shapes resist ordinary explanation. In Banagher the ring lies on a grassy rise, worn to a shallow oval with one bank still standing at the north-west edge. A second ringfort waits five hundred metres to the south-west, suggesting the hill once held more than a single household or a single claim. The fairies may be envy, wonder or memory for the people whose names disappeared when the earth took back the shape of their lives.
On a prominent rise in grassland. Poorly preserved oval rath (E-W 38m, N-S 25.5m) defined by a bank and external fosse. The bank survives at NW; elsewhere a scarp forms the enclosing element. No visible surface trace of the fosse survives at NE. A ringfort (GA016-006----) lies c. 550m to SW. The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Galway Vol. II - North Galway'. Compiled by Olive Alcock, Kathy de hÓra and Paul Gosling (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1999). Date of upload: 05 August 2010

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What survives
Recorded monument

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