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Fairy fort / earthen ringfort in Gowla (killian By.)

Fairy fort / earthen ringfort

What is recorded here

No one knows when the fort stood or who lived inside its earth wall. A man may have born children there, watched storms come off the Atlantic, and left the fort empty when his line ended. His descendants may have forgotten the fort before they invented the road that crossed it. The field is called the fort field because a man remembered the shape of the ground and repeated it until other people believed him. Forgetting does not remove the fort. It returns the fort to the land that first held it.
On a gentle SE-facing slope. According to the landowner, a 'fort' was levelled here in the mid-1940s by his father and the field is still known as the 'fort field'. No visible surface trace survives. 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

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

What survives
Recorded monument

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