County: Armagh Site name: THE KING'S STABLES (Tray td)
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: —
Author: C.J. Lynn, Historic Monuments & Buildings Branch, Department of the Environment
Site type: Ritual site - pond
Period/Dating: Bronze Age (2200 BC-801 BC)
ITM: E 683733m, N 845502m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.351313, -6.711977
This remarkable earthwork lies 1/2 mile WNW. of Emhain Macha and there has always existed the vague suggestion that the two sites might be in some way associated. The monument is undramatic externally, comprising a low and uneven penannular bank, absent on the W and 45m in average diameter crest to crest; this surrounds a sunken circular hollow 26m in diameter. The surface of the central space, which quakes underfoot when not flooded, is 2m below the level of the surrounding fields giving the banks an illusory substance when viewed from within. The landowner wished to drain the interior of the site for reasons of safety and it was felt that an exploratory excavation would be necessary before the future of the place could be decided.
After preliminary borings two 2m wide trial-trenches were opened across the bank and each extended approximately 5m into the level interior at opposite ends of a diameter. This revealed that the bank was a simple dump of red clay and that its inner slope was continued steeply down as a cut in natural to a level flat bottom 2m below the present surface of the interior; in other words the site represents the excavation of a flat-bottomed basin to a depth of 3-4m below the surrounding ground level with the addition of the comparatively slight perimeter bank (which would not seem to account by any means for all of the material removed from the middle). The basin seems to have contained standing water as the main fill was almost 1m of water-laid mud in turn covered by spongy peat; towards the edges the mud interleaved with a sandy gravel primary silt coming off the inner slope of the bank.
Finds from the bottom of the interior comprised 15 leaf-shaped bronze sword mould fragments (from both cuttings at opposite sides of the diameter), part of a hewn wooden bucket, 2 potsherds, a horn spatu late object, part of a carefully trimmed and perforated plank, the skulls of several small animals, 6 sets of antlers and one human skull. Considering the availability of copious natural water supplies within a few hundred yards it is difficult to suggest a convincing utilitarian purpose for the monument’s construction. The pottery, a plain flat-rimmed coarse ware of exactly the same type as that recovered from occupation levels at the Navan Fort, and the mould fragments indicate a date for the site in the later Bronze Age.
The continuing help and advice of the Palaeoecology Lab. QUB. in interpretation of the site and in post-excavation analysis is gratefully acknowledged.
The central area of the monument has been fenced off and the owner has kindly agreed that no reclamation work should take place.
