1992:150 - CORMEEN, Meath

Due to years of intensive ploughing little archaeology survived at this site except for those features cut into the subsoil. The manual removal of a thin crust of redeposited natural at the upper end of the site revealed a trapezoidal, backfilled souterrain, approximately 10m long, 2.5m wide at its terminal black soil to settle undisturbed in the resulting depression. Elsewhere on the site this black fill occurred only in the relative safety of the cultivation furrows.

The souterrain had been cut into the subsoil and, where sufficiently deep, into bed-rock. There was no evidence of stone paving or stone uprights to line and strengthen the walls, nor was there evidence of wood being used in its construction. The entrance was defined by 3 steps cut into the subsoil to allow for easy passage. These steps varied in width and depth. The bottom step did not lead directly onto the floor but rather onto a sharp slope with a drop down to the floor. Although cut into the subsoil, which tended to be rather friable because of its shaley make-up, the steps did not show signs of any great wear, which would have been expected had they been used extensively.

The passage sloped gently downwards giving the souterrain a maximum surviving depth of 2.6m from sub-soil ground level and in cross section it was steeply U-shaped. The souterrain was a simple bedrock hewn passage, widening at the terminal. There was no evidence of twisting passages, terminal chambers, air vents, roofing, creepways or false passages. The relatively fresh steps, the absence of silt-up along the floor and the clean dump nature of the backfill, would seem to suggest that the souterrain was never completed, nor left open for any length of time, being backfilled almost immediately.

Despite the blackness of the upper fill, and the total depth of the feature, only a small quantity of pottery was found. This came entirely from one of the upper charcoal-rich layers and is a mixture of Bronze Age and Souterrain ware.

Elsewhere a number of gullies and postholes were recovered which suggest the presence of structures in the immediate vicinity of the souterrain. However due to extensive plough truncation the evidence was very slight.

The machine trenching prior to pipe-laying allowed for an inspection of a long section through the site. A ditch section was noted some 6m west of the souterrain which measured 2.6m wide with a depth of 1m. It was V-shaped in profile, but with the bottom slightly flattened. It had a simple fill of medium brown, compact, clayey soil which tended to become sandy and slightly gravellier towards the bottom where the percentage of silt increased. The discovery of this feature confirmed the fact that the souterrain was constructed within the confines of an enclosure, as it appeared to tie in with a second ditch section noted some 43m to the west.

The enclosure appeared to be of a simple univallate type. There was indirect evidence of an accompanying bank consisting of the volume of redeposited natural which was noticeably deeper close to the lip of the western ditch. It is possible that such a bank would have partially overlain the souterrain and there might have been the intention to incorporate the souterrain within the bank. The internal diameter of the ditch, as uncovered north-west/south-east was 43m. If the original existence of a bank is presumed, the diameter would decrease to around 35m-38m. This does not fall within the 15m-33m range which accounts for 75% of univallate ringforts, so this would appear to have been a significant enclosure, slightly larger than the norm.

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