County: Down Site name: GORTGRIB td
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: —
Author: Messrs. Richard Warner and Tom Delaney, Ulster Museum
Site type: Habitation site
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 739921m, N 872996m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.585865, -5.835209
Investigations were conducted on the supposed site of a medieval church where overburden had been removed for the construction of a school playing field. No traces of the church or of any medieval structure was found; but remains of a cemetery were uncovered some distance away, and it is probable that the site of the church lay under some adjacent houses. However a complex of ditches and of intersecting gulleys was revealed which proved to be of Later Iron Age date – one ditch produced a vessel of ‘Souterrain Ware’ and several further sherds of this ware were found on the site. If the features uncovered represent some sort of open settlement the site may bear comparison with one in the Malone area of Belfast investigated by Mr. P.C. Woodman (Ulster Museum) in 1969.
