What is recorded here

Fairy fort in Ballynahown is a collapsed stone ringfort on flat Clare ground, with rocky heights to the east and sea views beyond. Its square boundary still shows through buried walls, briars and low banks, though fields have pressed against it and the posts Westropp wrote about have vanished. People may have lived there, marked it, or forgotten it enough to call it fairy-made.

On flat ground with higher rocky ground to the E and SE with good views of the sea and lower ground to the W. Indicated on the 1915 OS 6-inch map. Described by Westropp (1905, 349) as ‘an irregular bawn, with two low "posts" of about 5 feet apart’. A roughly square cashel (27m NW-SE; 25m NE-SW) defined by a collapsed and poorly preserved drystone wall which is best preserved at E where the outer wall is visible (Wth 2m; int. H 1.8m; ext. H 1.6m). The cashel is defined at SW by a bank of stone and earth which is overgrown with briars and between WNW and NNE it is defined by a low stony bank which forms a broad spread (Wth c. 5m). In the interior there are rocky areas towards the centre and in the S. The fields to the N and E have been reclaimed and material has been piled on and near the edge of the cashel at the N and E. On inspection in 1998 there were no ‘posts’ visible. Compiled by: Mary Tunney and Lynda McCormack Date of upload: 30 November 2022

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