County: Derry Site name: LISMURPHY
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: —
Author: C. J. Lynn, Historic Monuments Branch, Ministry of Finance
Site type: Ringfort - rath
Period/Dating: Undetermined
ITM: E 683634m, N 930684m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 55.116479, -6.689024
The owner of the rath (which is marked as a faint circle on the current edition of the 1”, O.S map) gave notice in March of his intention to erect farm buildings on it. The rath had been completely levelled at some time since the original survey and showed merely as a vague mound approx. 35m across in the middle of a ploughed field. A 15m long trial-trench, 1m wide was opened running radially from the centre; no vestige of an occupation layer existed (or remained) but a short length of curving gully was revealed near the middle of the site. The central area was mechanically cleaned of the disturbed ploughsoil and finally scraped by hand; the small section of gully turned out to be part of a very well-defined foundation trench for a roughly circular house or hut 4.6m in diameter with a rectangular hearth full of charcoal and clinker at the centre. No internal post-bases or holes were discerned nor was the position of the door clear. The gully, U-sectioned, averaged 50cm wide and 50cm deep. A band of dark soil running along the fill near the inner edge and extending to the bottom (with cleaner clay and stones forming the outer fill) presumably marked the line of decayed timbering emplaced in the slot.
No significant finds were made which could give a clue to the date of the structure nor could its association with the levelled rath be proved. It appeared that upper layers which might have contained such information had been previously removed.
