County: Antrim Site name: FORT (SITE OF) GLENGORMLEY
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: —
Author: N. F. Brannon, Historic Monuments and Buildings Branch, DOE(NI)
Site type: Ringfort - rath
Period/Dating: Medieval (AD 400-AD 1600)
ITM: E 731323m, N 881494m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.664481, -5.964323
The excavation, funded by DOE(NI), took place in two phases, in May and September 1986, prior to development of the site as a housing estate.
In the first phase one quadrant of the site was entirely manually excavated. Primary subsoil-cutting features consisted of curvilinear gullies up to 1m wide and 0.25m deep, possible post-pits and ephemeral gullies, usually filled with a charcoal-flecked, leached clay. Conventionally these features would be interpreted as traces of structures but no firm evidence of hearths was found and occupation debris consisted of no more than ash lenses and a few sherds of souterrain ware.
In the second phase of excavation the remaining half of the site was mechanically stripped of topsoil, revealing in places a thin spread of archaeological deposits which sealed subsoil-penetrating features, namely a curvilinear gully with a radius of 5m but lacking any associated deposits, and a long ditch-like feature, up to 5m wide and 1.5m deep. This latter was first thought to be a failed or collapsed souterrain but the deposition of silt deposits within it, containing animal bones and waterlogged wood, suggest rather that it was a void open for some considerable period. Its location within the interior of the ringfort, and the fact that the feature was sealed by clays which had eroded from the adjacent ringfort bank, indicate that the feature was cut at an early stage. Its interpretation remains uncertain. The site has been totally destroyed.
