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Fairy fort / earthen ringfort in Lackagh Beg,mountrice

Fairy fort / earthen ringfort

What is recorded here

Lackagh Beg holds a broken earthen ring where hazel still grows thick and badgers dig beneath the soil. The outer bank may have become a townland boundary, but the inner circle and its causeway suggest an older doorway into a lived landscape. Cattle have worn the edges smooth, yet the shape resists forgetting.
Near the top of a short, gentle, NE-facing slope in mixed pasture and tillage. A sub-circular area (int. diam. 20.8m E-W; 17.5m N-S) is defined by a low, broad, inner earthen bank (int. H 0.2-0.5m; Wth 3.7m at W-7.9m at E; ext. H 0.4-1.4m) E-S-N, which is reduced to a low scarp elsewhere, by a shallow fosse (D 0.5m; Wth 3m) E-S-N, which has been infilled N-E, and by a second, broad outer bank (Wth 8m; ext H 1.9m) ESE-NW. A possible original entrance gap (Wth 2.5m) in the inner bank at WNW has a corresponding causeway across the fosse outside, but no corresponding gap in the outer bank, which may be explained by the outer bank's reuse as a townland boundary with Mountrice WSW-NW. The surviving banks are overgrown with hazel, some of which appears coppiced, and, together with the fosse and interior, are heavily poached by livestock. The interior also contains a badger sett. Compiled by: Gearóid Conroy Date of upload: 05 December 2011 This monument is subject to a preservation order made under the National Monuments Acts 1930 to 2014 (PO no. 16/1956).

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What survives
Recorded monument

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