County: Offaly Site name: THE GIANTS ROAD, Cloncraff or Bloomhill (Offaly) and BALLYNAHOWNWOOD (Westmeath)
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: —
Author: Thaddeus C. Breen
Site type: Road - gravel/stone trackway - peatland
Period/Dating: Medieval (AD 400-AD 1600)
ITM: E 605174m, N 733426m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.351028, -7.922276
A five-week season of excavation was carried out for Bord na Móna and the Office of Public Works for the purpose of investigating the strata below the stone roadway discovered in 1983.
A cutting 5m square was opened immediately NW of the southernmost cutting of the first season. The stone roadway here was found to lie directly on a foundation of sods cut from the surface of the bog. Under this was a layer of brushwood which in turn overlay a series of alternating layers of marl and peat, containing some timber, to a depth of 2m below the stone roadway. Further horseshoes of 13th-century type were found, and also two leather shoe-fragments. These were all found immediately above the stone roadway.
An exploratory pit dug towards the NE end of the road showed that the single line of flagstones which represents the stone roadway at that end rests on a thin layer of gravelly clay, and that the lower layers are absent here.
41 Dunfferin Avenue, Dublin 8