Promontory fort - coastal, Carrownrush, Co. Sligo

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Promontory fort – coastal, Carrownrush, Co. Sligo

A small triangular tongue of land pushing out into Sligo Bay, bounded on its northeastern edge by steep sea cliffs and on its southern side by a narrow inlet called Oughwore, this site in the townland of Carrownrush carries the designation of a promontory fort without ever having appeared on any edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map.

That cartographic absence is itself a curiosity. Features of this kind were routinely captured by nineteenth-century surveyors, yet this one slipped through entirely, leaving its outline to be pieced together from fieldwork rather than any official record.

A promontory fort is a site where natural geography does most of the defensive work. Cliffs, inlets, and coastal drops replace the need for elaborate man-made enclosures on most sides, with only a single landward approach requiring a constructed barrier. Here, that barrier is a low bank of earth and stone, roughly 1.2 metres wide and between 0.3 and 0.5 metres high, cutting the promontory off from the surrounding land to the west. The bank is considered a relatively modern feature, which raises questions about what, if anything, preceded it at this narrow neck of ground. The triangular plateau it encloses measures approximately 13 metres northwest to southeast and 11.5 metres northeast to southwest, making it a compact and exposed position above the bay. Adding further interest to the location, a second possible promontory fort lies just 60 metres to the northwest within the same townland, noted as a separate site, so the concentration of potential enclosures here on this stretch of the Sligo coast is worth pausing over even if neither has been formally excavated.

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Pete F
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