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Fairy fort / earthen ringfort in Carhoon East

Fairy fort / earthen ringfort

What is recorded here

Fairy forts hide inside ordinary farms, but Carhoon is the ultimate ghost because the fort has vanished completely beneath the house and yard. A 1775 map still drew the Danish fort, yet the Bateman land later swallowed the earthworks until even the ditch disappeared. You are not looking at a ruin, you are standing on the buried heart of the fort, with the Bandon River waiting below like forgotten water.
In rolling pasture, on the top of a rise, with a steep fall of ground down to the Bandon River to the S. Indicated as a large penannular 'Danish Fort' on a 1775 map (no. 5) by B. Scalé (private collection). The enclosing elements along the SE arc are not indicated on Scalé's map, that area being occupied by 'a slate house and garden'. The rath, formerly on land owned by the Bateman family, appears to be the same one referred to by Ó Riordáin (1933, 19) who noted that 'In Bateman's farm there is said to have been a lios, now cleared away'. According to local information, the rath was partially used as a haggard which was defined by a curving field boundary on the NW side with a deep external ditch. The field boundary was levelled in the 1930s and the haggard extended. The present farm building and yard of Carhoon House appear to occupy the area of the possible rath. It is not visible above ground level. The above description is derived from 'The Archaeological Inventory of County Cork. Volume 5' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2009). Date of upload: 22 December 2009
A fairy fort or earthen ringfort in Carhoon East, likely an early-medieval settlement or defensive structure, is marked as a "Danish Fort" on a 1775 map, though this may reflect later misinterpretation. Local tradition associates such sites with fairy lore, and the fort's elevated position suggests strategic or ceremonial significance.

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What survives
Recorded monument

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