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Fairy fort / earthen ringfort in Gortnacarriga

Fairy fort / earthen ringfort

What is recorded here

Fairy fort in Gortnacarriga, County Kerry: earthen ring, thirty metres across, on a plateau beside the Killarney-Tralee road. Its bank still stands three metres high on either arc, while the southern curve has been pushed inward and buried under dumped earth. A field line cuts clean through the middle, as if the fort were never more than a suggestion to ploughmen. What lived inside may have been a farmhouse, a shrine or a childhood warning about fairies; the ground no longer answers that question.
In pasture, on a plateau, c. 75m to the E of the Killarney-Tralee road. The rath is indicated on the 1846 OS 6-inch map as a circular enclosure (diam. c. 30m) which is bisected by a NE-SW field boundary. It is indicated as a hachured arc NE-SW on the 1894 OS 6-inch map. The earthen bank (Wth 1.7m; int. H c. 0.6m; ext. H c. 3m) survives along the E and W arcs. The bank along the S arc has been pushed inwards and earth has been dumped along the area. There is a possible entrance at SE. The interior surface is uneven. Compiled by: Elizabeth Byrne, Ursula Egan and Sheila Ronan, Archaeological Survey Unit, University College, Cork. Date of upload: 31 January 2011

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What survives
Recorded monument

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