34 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



its fish-pond, garths, gates, bridges, and pigeon-house. The subject of my 

 paper confines me to the forts. In the large field to the west of Old Abbey 

 lawn, are a really curious set of enclosures' connected with two ring-walls. 

 Unfortunately a high park wall runs through the more eastern, and was 

 built out of its material, every trace being swept away for 7 or 8 yards 

 beside it. Subsidiary enclosures and a late house-site lie to the east of it in 

 the lawn. The cathair had a rampart 9 feet thick, with two faces of large 

 stones usually over 2 feet long and 18 inches deep and high. It is 105 feet across 

 the garth and 123 feet over all, regularly curved, and with a house enclosure 

 to the west. Strange curved enclosures of doubtful age and at least twice 

 modified run westward for 244 feet ; north of them was an oval hut, 18 feet 

 by 19 feet. About 400 feet from the east fort is another foundation of a 

 cathair of large but coarser blocks. Its wall is only 6 feet thick (another 

 late indication in ring-walls). It is about 80 feet north and south and 

 68 feet east and west, and has a curved annexe, 10 feet deep to the west. Its 

 wall is 15 feet thick, and possibly part of an older fort replaced by the lesser 

 ring. The blocks are from 2 feet to 3 feet long and 22 inches thick and 

 wide. The whole network recalls settlements at Hazelwood, Eossroe, and 

 Caheridoula in Co. Clare. In the field next the pigeon-house is a stone 

 3 feet 6 inches high and 3 feet by 2 feet wide. It is possibly an old bounds 

 stone. 



LiSNABROCK. — " The Badger's Fort." A fine well-pi'eserved typical ring- 

 fort of earth thickly overgrown. It measures 81 feet inside, 117 feet across 

 the ring and l^iS feet with the fosse, and is 5 feet to 6 feet higher than the 

 field and 11 feet to 12 feet above the fosse ; it is level with the field to the west. 

 It is 546 feet round in the fosse, and was faced with coarse stonework of 

 large boulders and slabs. The fosse is 10 feet to 16 feet wide below, and the 

 outer ring 4 feet to 7 feet high inside, and about 12 feet thick, being levelled 

 with the field. The revetment rose as a ring-wall above the garth, in which its 

 large inner blocks are in situ ; part has fallen into the fosse. Like so many 

 other forts, this illustrates the valuelessness of the oft-proposed division into 

 forts of earth and stone. 



In the same field is a defaced ring-wall or rather a bawn of stone-walling 

 to the east, but of earth faced and topped with stone to the west about 5 feet 

 high and 12 feet thick, of fairly good masonry, partly rebuilt to protect a 

 grove of beech trees inside. 



LissADiNWARVE.— "The fortified fort of the dead." No signs of burial are 

 visible, nor any tradition about its griru name. A low, stone-faced earth- 



' Plate IV, 



