Go Niche

THERE CAN’T BE a person in the country who doesn’t know the location of at least one fairy fort, the mysterious circular landmarks left untouched by superstitious farmers.

Such is the power of the lore behind them that at least one well-known property developer (rhymes with bin) has had his current woes attributed to interfering with one.

In fact our beloved fairy forts are simply the last vestiges of the thousands of ring forts that dotted the landscape in the fifth and sixth centuries.

Typically made up of a farmhouse plus a patch for grazing, they were surrounded by a wooden palisade fence with pointy tips to fend off cattle raids, the national pastime of the day.

In time the ring fort tradition died out, people built bungalows followed by ghost estates, and the rest is architectural history.

Except that the wooden palisades around the ring forts, being organic, rotted into the ground and fertilised the strange circles we see today. As the ring forts were forgotten, the circles were attributed to fairies.

I’m pretty sure I was taught all this at school but it was only on a recent visit to the Irish National Heritage Park in Wexford that I learned it, as a result of one of its fantastic guided tours.

The park, which has replicas of all sorts of native dwellings down through the ages, has a magnificent ring fort which is being revamped with the subtle inclusion of "all mod cons". This is because, from this summer on, holiday makers looking for unusual accommodation in Wexford will have the opportunity to stay in it, re-enacting the Táin Bó Cúailngeto their heart's content.

See inhp.com