Promontory fort - coastal, Long Island By.), Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Forts
Long Island sits off the Mizen Peninsula in Roaringwater Bay, one of the quieter islands along Cork's deeply indented southwestern coast, and somewhere on its shoreline the land drops away sharply enough that someone, at some point in the Iron Age, decided it was worth defending.
A coastal promontory fort uses the sea itself as the greater part of its fortification: a headland or jutting cliff already protected on three sides by water, with a bank or stone rampart thrown across the landward neck to close the gap. It is an economical kind of defence, and Irish coastal forts of this type are scattered along the Atlantic seaboard, though many remain poorly documented and some have lost significant sections of their earthworks to erosion over the centuries.
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