This is a micro cache placed close to one of Cork city's best kept secret historical remains.
The Maryborough Ring fort is located in what is now a modern surburban housing development.
Located close to the top of Maryborough hill this enclosure was most likely built in the Bronze age (2000-500 BC).
It would origionally have been used as an enclosure to protect animals and people from attack or theft. Over the years superstition led to them been called 'fairy forts' so farmers tended to leave them alone for fear of bad luck. Hense they survived to today.
The Maryborough ring fort is now part of an open green area, it is not signposted and many think it is a landscaped feature of the development rather than an ancient remnaint of prehistoric inhabitants of the area
There are thousands of ‘fairy forts’ scattered around Ireland today because of the superstition that you do not touch the homes of the fairies or they will reek revenge. These are the old homesteads of the Irish known as’ ring forts’. They are a circular enclosure surrounded by an earthen or stone bank and they were designed to protect your cattle at night time form cattle raiders and wolves. As time passed people moved out into more open forms of habitation and it is said the fairies then moved in making these ring forts their new homes. They are now called ‘fairy forts’ . They say the fairies are the greatest protectors of Irish archeology because farmers refuse to touch them.