What is recorded here

Marianne and John Swell built Carrigeen House beside the fort in 1740, naming the valley after themselves while leaving the old earthwork untouched. The oval bank still stands thirty-five metres across on the Castlecomer plateau edge, its three gaps marking entrances rather than one modern road cut. People called it a fairy fort because the flat interior resisted measurement and imagination, but Marianne likely walked past it daily and knew it as a neighbour rather than a mystery.

On a slight NW-SE ridge in rolling grassland, on the SW-facing margins of Castlecomer plateau. An oval enclosure (diam. c. 35m N-S x c. 40m E-W) defined by a bank (Wth at crest 1.5m; overall Wth 5.5m; int. H c. 0.8-m; ext. H 1.15-1.7m) and outer fosse (Wth c. 3m; D c. 0.25-0.8m). The interior was too heavily overgrown to allow accurate measurements but appeared fairly flat and featureless. There are three gaps in the bank, in the N (Wth 3m), NE (Wth 4m) and W (Wth 1.5m), the northern one being modern. Compiled by: Jean Farrelly Date of upload: 23 February 2016

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