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Fairy fort / earthen ringfort in Carrowntryla

Fairy fort / earthen ringfort

What is recorded here

Half-hidden beneath a field wall and grazing grass, the Demesne Fort keeps its shape on the north slope of a Galway hill. Two earthen banks still curve around a central ditch, though causeways and scars suggest people crossed and changed the ring before memory faded. The locals called it a fairy fort, perhaps because the true human story disappeared while the shape remained strange and untouched.
On N-facing slope of a hill in grassland. Known locally as 'Demesne Fort' (Neary 1914, 116, no. 88), this subcircular rath (E-W 56m, N-S 50.5m), in fair condition, is defined by two banks and an intervening fosse. The inner bank survives from SE through S to W; elsewhere a scarp, overlain by a field wall at N, forms the enclosing element. The outer bank survives from WNW through N to NE. Of the three causeways over the fosse, the S example could be original. A possible CBG (GA017-050001-) is associated. 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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