County: Tyrone Site name: CLOGHER DEMESNE
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: —
Author: R. Warner, Ulster Museum, Belfast.
Site type: Hillfort
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 653739m, N 850601m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.401171, -7.172356
The main project of the 1975 season was the complete excavation of the entrance of the ring-fort. Several phases of roads and wooden gateposts were uncovered, the earliest producing sherds of ‘E’ pottery, thus confirming the building of the ringfort during the period of importation of this class of pottery (thought to be somewhere between the later 6th and 8th centuries). The inner entrance-area had been badly damaged in late or post-Medieval times (possibly during the Nine-Years War).
No trace of the ring ditch was found under the ringfort entrance, but cobbling of ring ditch date under the ringfort bank suggests that at this point the ring ditch lay outside the line of the later ringfort defense.
Finds included a very fine bronze ‘button’ in the shape of a beetle from the lowest road level, and part of the neck and handle of a Clogher B2 amphora from the interior.
