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Fairy fort / earthen ringfort in Cloonsillagh

Fairy fort / earthen ringfort

What is recorded here

Cloonsillagh holds a levelled earthen ringfort where a mysterious boundary kink still marks the oval on old maps. The surviving bank stands one point one metres high inside and one point six metres outside, its inner face dressed with stones like common field fences. This is not a fairy tale but a human dwelling shaped by local hands, perhaps lost when pasture and ploughing redefied the land.
In pasture, on E-facing slope. Depicted as oval area (c. 35m NE-SW; c. 25m NW-SE) defined by hachured scarp SW->E and by kink in townland/barony boundary elsewhere; only kink in boundary fence shown on 1842 and 1905 OS 6-inch maps. Levelled; arc (C 29.8m) formed by earthen bank (int. H 1.1m; ext. H 1.6m) survives E->SW, incorporated into field boundary system; shallow external fosse (D0.3m) at SW. Inner face of bank stone-faced, similar to surrounding field fences. Faint trace of low rise enclosing remainder of interior (diam. 33.5m N-S); height not measurable. The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Cork. Volume 4: North Cork' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2000). 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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