What is recorded here

Mountnorth held a fifty-metre earthen ringfort on a sunny slope, marked clearly on maps from 1842 until 1937. Local people called it a fairy fort, perhaps because the earthwork vanished when farming changed the land around 1967. The field fence still bends where the western boundary cut through the ancient circle, preserving a ghost line in ordinary pasture.

In pasture, on NE-facing slope. Depicted as hachured circular enclosure (diam. c. 50m) on 1842, 1905 and 1937 OS 6-inch maps; appears to be incorporated into field fence system to W. According to local information, 'fort' levelled c. 1967. Bivallate circular enclosure, truncated to W by N-S field boundary, visible as cropmark of fosses in aerial photograph (CASAP); slight curve in N-S field fence (H 1m, with stone footings exposed at base) corresponds with location of W side but does not appear to follow line of bank. 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

A fairy fort or earthen ringfort in Mountnorth, likely dating to the early medieval period, is represented as a circular enclosure of about 50 meters in diameter, visible on historical Ordnance Survey maps from 1842 to 1937. Local tradition associates it with fairy lore, as suggested by its name and the common Irish belief in such sites as dwellings of the faé.

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