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Fairy fort / earthen ringfort in Drumbane

Fairy fort / earthen ringfort

What is recorded here

Drumbane Fort was a circular earthen ring with a forty-five-metre diameter and a shallow ditch, but ploughing has erased the bank and rampart entirely. Neary found only a rubble heap inside the garth in 1914, leaving behind a ghost of a house or cairn buried beneath Galway tillage. The earth swallowed the wall, the wall swallowed the meaning, and the field keeps both secrets flat.
In tillage. Marked on 1st ed. of OS 6-inch map as a circular enclosure (D c. 45m). According to Neary (1914, 118, no. 52), it was known as 'Drumbane Fort'. He described it as a 'circular, earthen fort … The diameter of the garth is 150 ft. [45.7m], ditch about 6ft. [1.8m], but the bank and rampart have disappeared.' Within the interior was 'a rubble-heap, the remains of a stone structure'; possibly a house or a cairn. No visible surface trace survives. An earthwork (GA005-048----) lay c. 80m to S. 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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