28 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



for their ships, lich grass inside and before the wall, rabbits in the sandhills, 

 fish, shell-fish, and birds round the shore. The other promontory forts, on the 

 other hand, were on high, steep cliffs, with unsheltered, inaccessible creeks 

 unfit for seafarers, but very suitable for places of refuge of the landward 

 popi^lation during a raid. 



The simplicity of the fort favoui's a belief in its great age. The wall is 

 10 feet thick in one section, without steps, terraces, or elal3orate gateways. 

 The northern end is returned along the low cliff for 24 feet ; thence it runs 

 southward (by compass), being of large stonework without filling, usually 

 4 or 5 feet high outside. 



At 290 feet from the northern bend it turns abruptly to the S.S.W., each 

 reach being in a straight line. This southern portion is inferior and perhaps 

 later, being of stone-faced earthwork, 8 to 10 feet thick. It is fairly preserved 

 for 78 feet, then nearly levelled, but still traceable for 45 feet to the end of 

 the low drift-bank, 10 to 12 feet high, on the shore of Portnafrankagh Bay. 

 The blocks of the northern part are often 3 feet to 4 feet 6 inches, and 2 feet 

 to 2 feet 6 inches, and a foot to 15 inches thick. They are well laid but with 

 open joints. At 156 feet from the north is a gateway, the piers between 

 3 and 4 feet high. There are apparent remains of a second entrance, and, still 

 farther south, of a thii-d gap without piers. The lintels lying near the first 

 two measure 4 feet Cinches and 5 feet 2 inches long. The first ope, like those 

 of the cliff-forts, was under 4 feet wide. The whole wall is 436 feet long. 



I saw no " guardrooms," but there were some slight walls at right angles 

 to the rampart. At 117 feet westward from the gap we find on a low rocky 

 knoll an early settlement. At the south end is a sunken cell 6 feet inside, 

 whence a passage curves to the north and east. There is an ambry in the 

 first, such as we find in beehive huts in Kerry, and in a souterrain in one of 

 the cathairs of Ballyganner, County Clare. The passage is 21 feet long. 

 Near the end is a hut-ring 18 feet across, and to the north-east of the last a 

 few feet away another hut, with two cells 6 feet and 3 feet wide inside, and 

 24 feet over all. Fiuther north 12 feet away is another curved souterrain 

 36 feet long, bending to the north-east round the outside of the last hut. A 

 low oval mound, 12 feet by 9 feet across, lies 18 feet from another house-site, 

 15 feet by 12 feet, which is 9 feet from the two-celled hut. Northward, also 

 9 feet away, is an irregular enclosure, its wall, 6 feet thick to the west and 

 south, and 3 feet elsewhere, divided by a crescent wall into two rooms ; the 

 southern is 12 feet each way, the northern 15 feet long. A nearly levelled 

 hut, 21 feet over all, adjoins the last on the south-west. All is levelled to 

 about a foot high, and the subterranean parts are uncovered, probably by 

 Mr. Dawson before 1841. 



