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Fairy fort / earthen ringfort in Haynestown

Fairy fort / earthen ringfort

What is recorded here

Fairy fort in Haynestown: a flat-bottomed ditch, forty metres across, holds charcoal and burnt bone inside its clay. The ditch has no visible gap, yet a beehive chamber sits on its northern line as if the fort had hidden its front door. People may have lived there, marked territory there, or fed the soil with ceremony before forgetting the name. The fort survived because the road moved away, leaving its strange shape intact on the rise.
Situated on a rise in a low-lying landscape. Remote sensing (05R0087) and archaeological testing (05E0963) over an extensive area (57 ha) in Haynestown and Haggardstown townlands identified a great number of potential archaeological monuments (McLoughlin 2008). Amongst these was a subcircular ditched enclosure (int. dims c. 45-50m E-W; c. 37m N-S) identified during testing. A section through the ditch showed it to be flat-bottomed (Wth of top 2.5m; Wth of base c. 0.9m; D 0.75m) and filled mostly with brown sandy clay that had some charcoal and burnt bone inclusions. An entrance feature was not identified, but the beehive chamber of Man-made underground passage (LH012-117002-) was on the line of the fosse at N. The monument is preserved intact as the proposed development was re-located. (McLoughlin 2006, 8-9) Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of upload: 27 October, 2017

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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