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Fairy fort / earthen ringfort in Labbacallee

Fairy fort / earthen ringfort

What is recorded here

Lios Leabba Caille is a broad earthen ring in County Cork, still visible as a slight rise and shadowed cropmark beneath modern fields. It has watched traffic and tillage for centuries, large enough to hold a village or a fortress depending on the tale told beside it. The fairies may have built it, but human hands certainly shaped the bank and ditch before memory faded.
In tillage, on gentle SSE-facing slope. Depicted as hachured subrectangular enclosure (c. 70m WNW-ESE; c. 50m NNE-SSW) on 1842 OS 6-inch map; as hachured nearly oval-shaped raised area (c. 70m NW-SE; c. 60m NE-SW) on 1906 and 1934 OS 6-inch maps. Roughly circular, slightly raised area (70m E-W; 64m N-S) survives, skirted by field boundary to N and roadway to W. Arc N->S, formed by cropmark of bank and external fosse, visible in aerial photograph (GSIAP, R714). Described by Windele (1898, 58) as 'a large round fort, with low, ruinous rampart...called...Lios Leabba Caille'; interior 'under wheat'. The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Cork. Volume 4: North Cork' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2000). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Date of upload/revision: 14 January 2009

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What survives
Recorded monument

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