County: Antrim Site name: 'RECTORY FIELD', CONNOR
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: —
Author: N. F. Brannon, Historic Monuments and Buildings Branch. DOE(NI)
Site type: Ecclesiastical enclosure
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 714927m, N 896891m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.806754, -6.212262
The rescue excavation, in advance of the building of a new rectory, was funded by DOENI, and lasted for four weeks in May-June 1986. Despite the lack of surface features, the proximity of this half-acre field to St Saviour's Church (the site of an Early Christian period monastic foundation and the bishopric of Connor) indicated that proposed development should be mitigated by sampling excavation. Fifteen trenches, mostly 3m x 3m, were opened throughout the field. Topsoil and upper soil levels yielded Early Christian period pottery sherds mixed with 18th- and 19th-century ceramics, suggesting fairly intense cultivation of the field. Numerous drains-narrow trenches infilled with basalt blocks-testified to a vigorous policy of draining in the last century.
The major discovery was that of a large ditch, up to 3m wide at the top, 1.5m deep, and of rounded 'U' profile. This feature was infilled with layers of (eroded) clay, dark soil deposits (probably redeposited 'occupation' debris) and lenses of ash. Early Christian period souterrain ware sherds occurred in some quantity in the upper strata of infilling soil.
The ditch was traced in five trenches and appeared to be pursuing a slightly curving NW-SE course across the E half of the field. Projection of the line of the ditch would suggest that it circuited the church site, at least on the N, and that it might therefore be interpreted as a perimeter boundary for an Early Christian monastic precinct.
Other finds included a fragment of a large mill-stone or rotary quern, undecorated but retaining traces of a cruciform-shaped depression around the central perforation, probably an aid to mechanical rotation; a long whetstone perforated at one end and rectangular in section; a circular stone disc with asymmetrically-placed central perforation, perhaps a loom-weight; and a bronze pin, broken but surviving to a length of 7cm. The pin, with quite a highly decorated head, appears to be a form transitional between ring-headed pins and those without rings. All of the finds are compatible with a date late in the 1st millennium AD.
Two sherds of glazed medieval pottery and a rim sherd of 'everted rim' cooking pottery attest slight medieval occupation.
As a consequence of the discoveries the Church of Ireland Select Vestry for the parish agreed to site the rectory development outside the line of the ditch, thereby minimising the development threat.
