What is recorded here

Fairy forts are human ringforts misnamed because people stopped remembering the hands that built them. In Claragh More, a broken earthen bank still circles a shallow pasture beside a mountain stream, its edge cut by a farm track and its interior crowded with cleared stones. The name suggests exclusion, but the shape suggests invitation: a small place made visible because people lived there, left it, and let the mountains take the rest back.

In pasture, on NE-facing slope, on lower NNE slope of Claragh Mountain and on W side of mountain stream. Circular area (28m NW-SE; 26m NE-SW) enclosed by earthen bank (int. H 1.4m) SE->NW, with external fosse (D 0.8m) SE->S; scarp (H c. 1.4m) NW->NE. Break (Wth 4m) in bank to SSW joined to levelled section of bank to E by farm trackway which crosses interior. Stream flows through part of remaining fosse. Interior slopes down to NE and used as dump for field clearance material. The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Cork. Volume 4: North Cork' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2000). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Date of upload/revision: 14 January 2009

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