Mountsandel Fort

The large oval mound, with its formidable deep ditch, is dramatically situated on the edge of a steep bluff, falling to the Bann at east. The fort dominates the river and was clearly of great strategic importance, but its date remains something of a puzzle.

A series of excavations have shown the fort and surrounding area to have been occupied throughout almost every phase of settlement in Ulster - in the Mesolithic and Late Neolithic; as a promontory fort in the Late Bronze Age / Early Iron Age, as a motte in the 13th Century and as a fort, possibly an artillery emplacement, during the 1641 Rebellion.

However, the excavations found nothing to support the traditional association of the mound with Dún dá beann, an important Early Christian stronghold. It may be an earthwork fortification of the Anglo-Norman invasion period, perhaps the castle of Cell-Santain built by John de Courcy in 1197, as recorded in the Annals of Ulster; excavation at the foot of the mound produced radiocarbon dates consistent with an Anglo-Norman origin for the ditch.

Excavations in the field to the north east of the fort in the 1970s uncovered an extensive Mesolithic settlement, with huts, hearths, pits and several hundred flint implements. There were also large numbers of fish and bird bones, with some wild pigs, hare and red deer, and a large quantity of hazel nut shells. The site was probably part of a winter settlement, where huts were large and more substantial than the temporary summer constructions.