What is recorded here

Fairy forts are not fairy forts, they are human ringforts misnamed because people stopped remembering the humans who built them. Ballysteen is one: a 28.8m circular earthwork on a gentle south-facing slope, with a bank, fosse, counterscarp, a southwest gap, and an interior now choked with trees, briars and nettles. The shapes are still exact enough to show that this was made, not dumped; the forgetting is what makes it strange.

In pasture, on gentle S-facing slope. Circular area (diam. 28.8m) enclosed by earthen bank (int. H 0.85m; ext. H 1.6m) with external fosse (D 0.85m; Wth 2.8m), with low earth-and-stone counterscarp bank (ext. H 0.5m) S->E. Inner bank is best preserved along N arc, but becomes scarp-like E->S (H 1.4m; Wth 3.5m). Gap (Wth 1.25m) in bank at SW. Fosse becomes very shallow E->S. Interior is covered with trees, briars and nettles. Compiled by: Denis Power Date of upload: 26 August 2011

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