Fairy fort / earthen ringfort in Dunbell Big

Currently located on what is effectively a peninsula within a large quarry. A circular ringfort (diam. c. 48m; overall diam. on OS map c. 68m) indicated on the 1st (1840) ed. OS 6-inch map and on the 1899-1902 revision and visible on satellite imagery with an external fosse. An aerial photograph (CUCAP ATA014, 19 July 1967; ASW036, 17 July 1967) shows that this is a trivallate ringfort, with two additional outer concentric fosses visible as cropmarks. In the 19th century a number of the enclosures in Dunbell Big were excavated (Prim 1852-3, 119-27; 1853-5, 397-408). Prim (1852-3, 120-26) states that, ‘At a distance of two or three fields from the great rath [KK024-016---- = E]’, there are three other enclosures [KK024-010001- = D; KK024-011---- = C; KK024-012---- =B based on Prim’s map 1872-3, 225], ‘situated each about four hundred feet [c. 122m] from the other…One of these enclosures was levelled and tilled, without being trenched, a considerable time since. A second was partially trenched in the month of May, 1842, for the purpose of spreading out on the surrounding land, as a manure, the material of which it was composed, a rich black clay largely impregnated with organic remains. The third rath has now been subjected to the same process [‘trenched’ and levelled] for a similar purpose, and thus each of these three forts is now nearly obliterated’. In the third enclosure several artefacts were uncovered as well as an, ‘enormous quantity of bones of animals was everywhere met with. These chiefly consist of remains of deer, oxen, horses, swine, the calf and domestic fowl, the two first being the most numerous…The largest quantity of bones was found in the inner fosse…However, bones were found in thick layers all through the central mound of the rath to the depth of a couple of feet from the surface. The cooking places, in which the flesh of these animals was dressed for use, were also found. They consisted of eight or ten small pits, circular in form, and not of greater diameter than a foot and a-half, or depth than two feet. Each was quite full of charcoal, burned stones, and charred bones. Some of the deposits of ashes were as white as turf ashes, whilst there was also remains of wood not entirely consumed. Fragments of a substance, resembling slag or clinkers, were also found in some of these pits, which appeared to have been used as furnaces wherein were forged the rude iron implements of which specimens turned up. These cooking pits and furnaces were not faced with stones, but were simply dug in the floor of the rath’. Amongst the finds there were portions of nine querns, one of which was decorated with ‘concentric mouldings’; hone stones; ‘piles of round pebbles’; ‘small flat, rounded stones, pierced in the centre’; ‘circlets of black slate and jet’; bone objects including pins and beads and a comb; a bronze pin and two fibulae; a small iron square bell and other iron objects including a fibula, an axe-head, knife blades, a chisel, a small reaping-hook and a horse-shoe and a few fragments of ‘very coarse baked and glazed pottery’. In a subsequent article, Prim (1853-3, 402) mentions that, ‘no further traces of pottery ware of any kind have been discovered in any of the Dunbel raths since 1852, when I had only to report the finding of a few small fragments of a single vessel’. An enclosure (KK024-010001-) c. 110m to the WSW, another (KK024-012----) c. 140m to the ESE and another (KK024-014----) c. 200m to the S, have been completely quarried out. See attached: KK024-011----_01 aerial photograph (CUCAP ATA014, 19 July 1967) KK024-011----_02 aerial photograph (CUCAP ASW036, 17 July 1967) KK024-011----_03 aerial photograph (CUCAP BGG093, 16 July 1971) KK024-011----_04 Prim's map 1872-3, 225 Compiled by: Jean Farrelly Date of upload: 9 November 2021