County: Down Site name: 'THE GROVE', Downpatrick, Demesne of Down
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: —
Author: N. F. Brannon, Historic Monuments and Buildings Branch, DOE(NI)
Site type: Enclosure
Period/Dating: Medieval (AD 400-AD 1600)
ITM: E 748519m, N 844602m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.328493, -5.716532
Brief excavations, consisting of machine trenching and manual follow-up, funded by DOE(NI), took place in October 1985. The site had previously been extensively sampled in 1982 (summary report in Lecale Miscellany 1 (1983), 27-9), the major feature then discovered being a large ditch, 2m wide and 1.5m deep, which had yielded two early 13th-century coins. With development imminent a mechanical excavator was used to pursue the line of the ditch, cutting cross-sections at intervals over a distance of approximately 50m. Where observed the ditch followed the contour across the slope, but is assumed either to have halted or to have turned upslope. The scale of the ditch suggests that it represents one of the few traces of delineation of property in medieval Downpatrick early in the 1200s.
