What is recorded here

Fairy forts are no fairy tale. They are ancient human places misnamed because people stopped remembering what they were for. Curraghscarteen was a real fortified workshop where iron was cut and shaped. It had double banks, a wet ditch and a furnace pit. Men lived there, made tools and left the site changed. The fort is gone now, but it was never imaginary.

On a S-facing slope in pasture. A bivallate ringfort (int. diam. c. 105ft/32m; overall diam. c. 160ft/48.7m) consisting of a bank (H c. 2ft/0.6m; overall Wth c. 15ft/4.5m; Wth at crest c. 7ft/2.1m), waterlogged fosse (Wth c. 12-30ft/3.6-9m; D c. 4ft/1.2m) and outer bank (overall Wth c. 22ft/6.7m; Wth at crest c. 11ft/3.3m). Archaeological excavations were carried out in 1952 following Land Project works. The excavator, Gearóid Ó hIceadha of the OPW, described the monument as follows, ‘The fort, approximately 200 feet [c. 61m] in overall diameter, was surrounded by double banks and fosses. The fosses were badly water-logged and large sections of the site were very wet because field drainage had for a long time been directed into the area containing the fort…Excavations, which had in places to be carried to a greater depth than was originally anticipated, produced evidence of iron working. Several pieces of unworked iron, fragments of two iron knives and a whetstone were recovered. Two pits sunk in the subsoil with an arrangement of stones adjoining, seem likely to have served as a furnace’ (OPW correspondence, 26 May 1952). There is a measured plan [in imperial] of the monument showing the excavation cuttings, as well as two profiles across the ringfort (OPW correspondence, 4 June 1952). The monument has been levelled, though faint traces of it are visible on satellite imagery. Compiled by: Jean Farrelly Date of upload: 23 June 2020

The monument record does not grant public access. Check the route and ask the landowner before entering private land.