Westropp — Fortified Headlands and Castles, $. Coast Munster. 205 



Not far from the large fort, opposite to Gull Island, a little spur, not 12 feet 

 wide at the neck, bears marks of entrenchment, so slight that ■ only for 

 others of these minute cliff-dwellings I might hesitate to list it among the 

 promontory forts. 



The large fort is convex to the land ; it has a slight outer mound, a fosse 

 6 feet to 8 feet deep, and 10 feet wide. It was cut through the drift, almost 

 down to the looser rock, and is now filled up for some feet with dark washed 

 earth. 1 The inner bank is (as so commonly) a low mound thrown up from 

 the fosse and capped with a mass of stones thrown together (so far as I could 

 see) with no trace of building or facing ; the wall rises 10 feet above the fosse 

 in the middle, and 12 to 16 feet high at the ends. It was about 100 feet 

 long, and is 27 feet wide, with curious recurved ends like Dundahlin, Co. 

 Clare. The faces of the drift bank to either end have fallen, and are wasting 

 away. 



Farther eastward in Ballinarid, near the great Dane's Island fort, at 

 Cooneenagartan cove, is a headland with a trace of a fence, clearly not 

 modern, across the neck. I saw no sign of a fosse and assert nothing of its age • 

 there may have been a dry-stone wall, now removed. 



Caerickaduerish, Annestown (O. S. 25). — To the east of Dunabrattin 

 Head, in the baronyof Middlethird, I found a small, strong, unmarked cliff- 

 fort, lying not far to the south-east of Annestown Church. The cliff is about 

 120 feet high ; the ditch is 21 feet wide, 8 feet deep, and 30 feet long. The 

 mound is 4 feet 6 inches higher than the garth, 14 feet to 20 feet above the 

 fosse, and 21 feet thick. There is a slight gangway, 3 feet or 4 feet high ; 

 no hut sites remain in the enclosure. The neighbouring forts to either side, 

 Dunabrattin and Green Island, are well seen from it. 



Dunhill (O. S. 25). — Up the stream valley (past Annestown village and 

 the curious late monument on a low mound in the marshes), we approach a 

 picturesque tower, on the edge of lofty, nearly perpendicular cliffs. It is the 

 castle of the Poers, Lords of Donuil, 2 and recalls, more than our peel towers 

 usually do, the " castled crags " of the Rhine Valley, though on a far lesser 

 scale. I include it because the clifi'-fenced spur on which it stands bears 

 plain trace of the foundation of a strong wall of dry stone, convex to the land, 

 doubtless " the dim of the cliff," or wood which gave the place its name. The 

 castle is a fairly perfect tower, possibly of the late fourteenth or the fifteenth 

 century ; its ornamental features are defaced. The keep has two stories 



1 See section, Plate XXI, No. 9. 



2 I find no early mention giving the now asserted form Dun aill ; it is Dunoyle, 

 Donnoil, Dunuile, and so forth, in early Norman documents. 



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