County: Cork Site name: CRUSHYRIREE
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 94E0118
Author: Eamonn Cotter
Site type: Water mill - horizontal-wheeled
Period/Dating: Early Medieval (AD 400-AD 1099)
ITM: E 572655m, N 580260m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 51.973731, -8.397988
The site was excavated over a two-week period in September, following its discovery by the landowner during drainage operations. It is located at 420ft above sea-level, on the course of a stream which flows into the Butlerstown and, ultimately, the Glashaboy rivers, fed from a hinterland of wet boggy land which rises to the west and north. A watercourse had been dug through the site some thirty years ago, destroying most of the stratigraphy, and presumably, much of the structure itself.
The surviving elements of the structure consisted of the flume and parts of the undercroft, along with a number of timbers which had collapsed into the undercroft. No trace of the mill-wheel or the mill-stones survived. The undercroft itself would originally have measured 2.14m east-west x c. 2m north-south with its north wall constructed of stone and the other sides of timber. Only the lower courses of the wall survive, and these have slumped inwards. The southern sole plate of the undercroft survives intact and has a number of mortices cut into it, which would have held the uprights which formed the wall of the wheelhouse. On the western side of the undercroft a substantial beam supports the flume. The northern part of this beam has completely decayed. Its southern end rested against the western end of the southern sole plate, held in place by a lap joint.
The undercroft had a floor of wooden planks measuring approximately 0.2m wide x 30mm thick. The northern ends of these planks had decayed completely.
The flume measured c.1m long but is likely to have been longer originally as its western (higher) end had been broken, probably during the original drainage work here in the 1960s. It was fashioned from a single block of timber in which a rectangular channel had been cut, 0.3m wide x 0.34m deep, narrowing at its lower end so as to increase the force of the water-jet hitting the wheel. The base of the flume was notched so as to fit onto the support beam underneath.
All the structural timbers were oak, but a peg found lying on the floorboards was of holly.
Dates centring on AD 800 were obtained from two samples sent to Q.U.B.
Ballynanelagh, Rathcormac, Co. Cork
