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Fairy fort / earthen ringfort in Kilgreana

Fairy fort / earthen ringfort

What is recorded here

Kilgreana holds a broken ring where tradition claims abortive children were buried, turning a ordinary fort into a chamber of lost beginning. The earth still rises twenty-six metres across, marked by scars and boundaries that cut through its flesh like knives through skin. What the children lacked in life may have concentrated in the dirt itself, making the ring a vessel rather than a victim. To walk its edge is to handle the shape of what never entered the world, and the world remembers the weight of that absence.
Possible ringfort reused as a children's burial ground (LI049-082001-), in reclaimed pasture, 40m E of townland boundary with Curraghroche. Depicted on the 1840 ed. OSi 6-inch map as a raised oval-shaped area defined by a scarp. Shown on the 1897 ed. OSi 25-inch map as a raised sub-circular shaped area (dims. c. 26m NW-SE; 27m NE-SW) defined by a scarp, with fosse intersected at NW-N-E-SE by a post-1700 field boundary. In 1840 the Ordnance Survey recorded this monument as ‘a fort in which tradition says abortive children were buried' (OSNB Doon to Kilbreedy, 200). Monument visible as a tree lined circular-shaped area, intersected at NE, SW and NW by field boundaries on Digital Globe orthoimage taken between 2011-13 and on Google Earth orthoimages. See attached Google Earth orthoimages. Compiled by: Fiona Rooney Date of upload: 5 October 2021

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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