County: Galway Site name: COOLOLLA
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 04E0861
Author: Martin Jones, National Roads Design Office
Site type: House - 18th/19th century
Period/Dating: Modern (AD 1750-AD 2000)
ITM: E 578863m, N 728633m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.307559, -8.317142
Fourteen trenches were opened by hand at the site of a ruined early modern house with outbuildings in Coololla townland on the proposed N6 Galway–Ballinasloe road scheme. The proposed roadway will remove c. 85% of the site and will destroy the standing buildings.
The trenches were arranged (within the road corridor) at regular intervals within a grid measuring 30m by 30m. Test-trenches measured 1m by 1m.
Prior to excavation it was clearly evident that the area had been severely impacted on by machine activity, with a large area machine-cleared for the construction of a concrete yard area, silage pit and gravel access road at the site. What remained, in the majority of the test-trenches, was a highly compromised stratigraphy consisting almost exclusively of modern sediments.
Fewer disturbances were evident near the southern boundary wall of the site. While the normal stratigraphy had been compromised, excavations in trenches along and near this boundary produced finds, a number of which were diagnostic. These included oyster shell, a possible post-medieval potsherd and a late medieval or post-medieval potsherd. Three trenches were opened in an undisturbed area towards the northern limit of the road corridor, all of which were unremarkable.
Excavations produced no features pre-dating the existing structure and, considering the nature and degree of modern disturbance at the site, the pottery finds are not indisputable evidence for domestic activity pre-dating the existing structure.
Information to be included in a building survey was gathered concurrently with groundworks. This forms the basis for a report detailing the architectural heritage of the site.
Galway County Council
