1973:051 - BISHOPSCOURT (Bonfire Hill), Down

During construction work on a new water tank for the nearby R.A.F. base a portion of a souterrain, probably unassociated with earthworks, was uncovered on a hill-top at 90 ft O.D. and a quarter mile west from the shore at Guns Island, Co. Down. It appeared that the souterrain had been destroyed by earlier wartime construction works on the site and all that remained was an 1 1m length of the two lowest courses of the walls. The passage began to run deeper at the S.W. end and here 4 lintels survived covering a blank termination about 60 cm high. At the N.E. end of the extant section, where it ran under the water tank foundations, the parallel rows of boulders turned through two right angles, first S.E. and then back again on its original course, N.E In order to plan the structure a considerable quantity of modern slip and rubble had to be removed along with the top of a layer of dark soil, thickest at the N.E. end which appeared to be occupation debris accumulating in situ or, more likely, rubbish introduced as deliberate filling from some now vanished opening at the N.E. end. This dark gravelly deposit contained shells and animal bones and produced three sherds of ‘everted-rim cooking pottery’ and a small fragment of a decorated quernstone of medieval type.