1993:142 - ROCK OF DUNAMASE, Laois

NMI Burial Excavation Records

County: Laois Site name: ROCK OF DUNAMASE

Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 93E0150

Author: B.J. Hodkinson

Site type: Castle - Anglo-Norman masonry castle

Period/Dating: Multi-period

ITM: E 651939m, N 698234m

Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.032260, -7.225645

Excavations on behalf of the OPW, in and around the barbican gatehouse of the castle, took place over a three-week period in October. At the rear of the gatehouse, a cobbled area was exposed running along the inside of the surviving section of the east curtain wall. This is believed to be the original courtyard level. Analysis of the standing fabric of the gateway showed that this level originally continued out to the rebate for the door towards the front of the passage and that the original road level had been reduced, more or less, to that seen at the start of excavation. At the same time parts of the passage walls were refaced down to the new level. On the outside of the door rebate was a drawbridge pit which was cut into a redeposited clay layer forming the surface to which the road level was cut. The pit was divided into two halves by a stone wall standing to a height of c. 0.8m, which ran out to another wall which closed off the front of the gatehouse. This cross wall was not explored to its full depth but the outer face curved across the opening of the gatehouse and had an external batter. On either side of the passageway at the base of the door rebate was a posthole and these postholes were interpreted as receiving the jambs for the modified gate. There was some evidence to suggest that the gatehouse may have been placed on an earlier earthwork but the short duration of the excavation did not allow this possibility to be pursued further. There was also evidence to show that the gatehouse and surviving portion of the east curtain were built earlier than the west curtain. There was no artefactual evidence to date the various phases of the gatehouse. The existence of a drawbridge pit, a 13th-century introduction, would suggest a mid to late 13th-century date for the building of the barbican, while the modifications to the gatehouse probably post-date the Cromwellian slighting of the castle.

Gouig, Castleconnell, Co. Limerick