A record with no eyes

The Sites and Monuments Record lists about 150,000 archaeological monuments in the Republic, from ringforts to tower houses; Faire shows the 140,000 or so that have a position on the map. Every one is protected under the National Monuments Acts. The National Monuments Service has a handful of archaeologists to survey them, so a typical monument is visited by the State once in a generation, if at all. Damage from machinery, land reclamation, scrub, dumping and plain neglect is usually noticed years after it happens, when the ringfort is a field. Faire asks the people who walk past these places every week to look, photograph and say how they are.

What happens to a report

• A person reads it. Reports that cannot be matched to the monument, or that name a person, are not published.
• Published reports appear on the monument's page with the reporter's first name and the date. The reporter's position, if shared, is reduced to a distance from the record.
• The person who reads reports of fresh damage or destruction passes them on to the National Monuments Service and the county heritage officer. Your private link to the report says when that has been done.
• Anyone can download the register as CSV for a county. The National Monuments Service and councils can have the whole thing.

The law, in one paragraph

It is an offence to dig at, interfere with, or damage a recorded monument without notice to the Minister, and the penalties are serious. Faire reports are observations, not findings; the National Monuments Service decides what a monument is and what has happened to it. Most monuments are on private farmland. You have no right to enter without the landowner's permission; look from the road or ask. Faire never asks you to go onto land.

Privacy

• Your full name and email are held privately so a heritage officer can ask you a question. Your first name is shown on the report.
• Your phone position is used once to calculate a distance and is not published.
• Photographs should not show people. If one does, it will be removed.
• You hold a private link to each report and can remove it at any time.
• Questions: hello@rawbyte.ie.

Who this is for

Built by rawbyte in Co. Cavan as a pilot for county councils and the National Monuments Service under the Heritage Council's “Heritage at Risk” theme and the Department of Rural Development's Digital Innovation Programme. A council can run its own county on it, with its heritage officer as the reader. The handover notes.