What is recorded here

Cloonnafinneela holds a forty-metre earthen ring where black earth and shattered stone still mark an ancient cooking fire. People may have gathered there to boil flesh and share warmth before field boundaries cut through the middle. The bank rises nearly two metres on the outside, proving the circle resisted forgetting even when pasture and vegetation swallowed the rest.

In pasture, on a N-facing slope. A circular area (diam. c. 40m) enclosed by an earthen bank (int. H 0.9m; ext. H 1.9m) and external fosse (D 0.2m). The bank and fosse are best preserved along the SE arc with the traces of a possible counterscarp bank (ext. H 0.35m) along the outer edge of fosse S-WSW. The ringfort is bisected by an earthen field boundary (H 1.2m) with a drain (Wth 1.8m; D 0.35m) on either side; this cuts through the interior on a rough NW-SE axis leaving about two thirds of the monument, which is heavily masked by vegetation cover, to the E of the boundary. There are breaks in the bank at E (Wth 2.6m), S (Wth 3m) and N (Wth 4.5m). Black earth and heat shattered stone (KE022-026001-), suggesting a possible fulacht fia, are visible in the area of the fosse at WNW. Compiled by: Matt Kelleher Date of upload: 28 February 2014

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