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Fairy fort / earthen ringfort in Dristernan

Fairy fort / earthen ringfort

What is recorded here

Fairy fort / earthen ringfort in Dristernan: a 30 m circular rath on a Leitrim bluff, its low bank merging into the slope and its south edge caught in a field bank with a gateway. Susan Curran drew it from LiDAR for a University College Dublin thesis, but the shape remained half-hidden in pasture and scarp. It may have been a home, a marker or a boundary place, yet the lough below and the road cutting past keep it tied to living land rather than forgotten myth.
Situated in improved pasture on a bluff overlooking a slight fold to the W and Headford Lough c. 350m to the SE in a gently undulating landscape. It was first identified by Susan Curran as part of an M.A. thesis with University College Dublin using a LiDAR survey dataset commissioned by Leitrim County Council and the National Roads Authority. This is a circular area (diam. 30m N-S; 30m E-W) defined by a low earthen bank (at N: Wth of base 7m; Wth of top 1.7m; int. H 0.4m; ext. H 0.2m) NNW-NE merging into the slope NE-SE. It is defined by a steep, tree-lined scarp (Wth 1.5m; H 1.3m) down to a NNW-SSE road S-W-NNW. The perimeter at S is incorporated into an ENE-WSW field bank with a gateway at S, perhaps on the location of the original entrance. There is no visible fosse. Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of upload: 11 May, 2015

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What survives
Recorded monument

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