What is recorded here

Forty feet above Brandon Bay, a broken stone ring still holds the ghost of a hut and a buried passage. Men chipped stones from its collapse to build elsewhere, exposing the inner chamber where a narrow tunnel disappears into darkness. The fort gave up its bones to keep other houses standing, transforming ancient mystery into ordinary utility.

Internal diam. 37m A cashel containing traces of 2 or possibly 3 huts and a now inaccessible Man-made underground passage. It crowns a local eminence (58 feet/18m OD) about 200m from Caher Point on the W side of Brandon Bay. The natural scarp falls steeply away from the site on its E side but gradually levels out towards the W. The wall is not well preserved but a dense band of collapse, up to 10m wide, encircles the interior. However, the drystone built outer face of the wall is visible along the NE quadrant where it reaches a maximum height of .9m. A trench has recently been dug along the mound of collapse from N to W to supply stones for building and other purposes. A short stretch of the wall face has been exposed by this activity towards the N end and it appears that only the core material has been disturbed. For most of its circumference the inner face of the wall is surmounted by a modern field wall and it is not always possible to distinguish between the two. The earlier wall appears to have been stepped and, where best preserved at SSE, the lower step is .15m high and .45m wide and the wall rises a further .7m above this. The wall is 4.4m thick. A track crosses the interior between a break in the wall at WSW and 2 breaks at NE. It is not clear which of these was the original entrance. In the WNW sector of the interior a band of grass-grown collapse outlines the site of a hut and there is a faint suggestion of a 2nd hut immediately to SW. Within the remains of the wall of the 1st hut, a short section of a drystone-built Man-made underground passage passage has been exposed by the removal of a roofing slab. It is c. 0.66m wide but is infilled almost to the roof. It appears to run in a N-S direction and may have turned W from its N end but this is not certain. A very disturbed, sub-circular spread of stones, immediately SE of the centre of the enclosure, may mark the site of a 3rd hut but can equally well be interpreted as clearance debris. The above description is derived from J. Cuppage, ‘Corca Dhuibhne. Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey. Ballyferriter. Oidhreacht Chorca Dhuibhne’ (1986), no. 548. In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Date of upload: 7 August 2013 This monument is subject to a preservation order made under the National Monuments Acts 1930 to 2014 (PO no. 10/1984).

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