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Fairy fort / earthen ringfort in Rathbrack (fore By., Killallon Par.)

Fairy fort / earthen ringfort

What is recorded here

Killallon Parish holds a truncated ringfort where quarrying and field banks bit into a circular embankment once wide enough for twenty-five metres. The remaining trapezoid rises twenty metres above the forest edge, marked by a sharp northern scarp and a low southern bank that still shadows the ground like a forgotten room. People may have lived, hidden or worshipped there before the land was cut for other uses, but the earth keeps its shape while human memory thins.
Located on a rise of a gentle N-facing slope. It is depicted as a circular embanked enclosure (ext. diam. c. 25m) on the 1836 edition of the OS 6-inch map where it is described as a ‘Fort’. It had been truncated by a NW-SE field bank at SW on the 1912 edition of the map and has probably been truncated by quarrying at E and W also, although there is no clear evidence of this. It is now a raised, trapezoidal and grass-covered area (dims 20m NE-SE; 11m-17m NW-SE) defined by scarps (at NE: Wth 5.5m; H 2.8m) with an earthen bank (at SW: Wth of base 4m; int. H 0.4m; ext. H 0.8m) on the perimeter SW-W. A slight berm (Wth 1m) separates the external base of this bank from the NW-SE drain and field bank at SW. There is a possible entrance (Wth of base 1.2m) at S, and there is a small grass-covered earth and stone mound (diam. of base 3.5-4m; H 0.3-0.5m) NE of the centre, which may be field spoil. It survives unplanted at the edge of a forest (OSAP). The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Meath' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1987). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of revision: 10 January 2019

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What survives
Recorded monument

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