What is recorded here

Fairy forts are not fairy forts at all. They are abandoned human settlements, misnamed because people stopped believing they understood the land. The true wonder is that human ingenuity became so strange it sounded like magic. This is a place where forgotten people built, lived, left marks, and disappeared into the story. The field remembers what the town forgot. The name changed because belief changed. The structure remains the same: human hands, human time, human pride. What we call mystery is often only memory losing its shape.

Situated at the S tip of a N-S spur. This rath is depicted on McCrea’s Map of County Monaghan (1793) and on the OS 6-inch maps. It is a grass and rush-covered circular area (diam. 49m WNW-ESE; 47m NNW-SSE) defined by three overgrown earthen banks with two intervening fosses. The innermost bank (Wth of base 10-12m; int. H 1m at NNW to 2m at SSE; ext. H 3m at SSE to 4m at NNW) is separated by a rounded fosse (Wth of top 10-12m normally to 16m at SSE; ext. D 2-2.5m) from the middle earthen bank (Wth of base 7-10m; ext. H 1.15m-2m). This bank is levelled into the inner fosse in places creating a berm (Wth 8-9m) between a reduced inner fosse (Wth of base 2-3m; ext. D 0.5m) to a smaller middle bank (int. H 0.5m) particularly at W-NW and E-SE. The middle bank is separated by an external fosse (Wth of top 6m at NNW to 12m at WNW; ext. D 1m) from the third outermost bank (Wth 3-6m; ext. H 0.3-1m) that appears to be original (max. ext. dims 124m WNW-ESE; 95m NNW-SSE). The outermost bank is best preserved ESE-SSW, but it has been pushed into the fosse inside it SSW-WSW and heightened into a stone-faced field bank WSW-NE. The entrance through the inner (Wth of base 1.5m) bank with a causeway (Wth of top 3.8m; H 0.8m) and the outermost (Wth of base 3.2m) bank is at E but this area of the middle bank is disturbed. The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Monaghan' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1986). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Revised by: Michael Moore Date of revision: 30 January 2018

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