County: Sligo Site name: KILLARAGHT
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 47:83 Licence number: 94E0040
Author: Charles Mount
Site type: No archaeology found
Period/Dating: N/A
ITM: E 576715m, N 798076m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.931508, -8.354564
A proposal to erect a house in an area of archaeological potential which consists of a complex of monuments including a graveyard, two possible prehistoric burial mounds, a system of field boundaries with contiguous enclosures, a roadway and the site of a possible hospital necessitated a test excavation carried out on March 29, 1994. The excavation work involved the digging of three trenches across the area of the proposed house.
The cuttings were dug with a mechanical excavator. They were 15.9m in length by 1m in width, except Cutting 2 which was 0.4m in width, and were excavated to a maximum depth of 0.52m, which was felt to be adequate as there was no soil disturbance below this depth. The stratigraphy was found to consist of a sod layer to 0.5m–0.6m in depth above an A horizon which extended to 0.35m–0.38m in depth. This consisted of a brown loam with few stones, a definite plough-soil. The B horizon or natural subsoil was an orange to grey clay with a number of decalcifying limestones. Towards the east of the cutting the A horizon sat directly on the C horizon or bedrock which is Lower Carboniferous Limestone. The A and B horizons were found to be completely sterile and the area tested of no archaeological significance.
Foxhill, Wheaton Hall, Drogheda, Co. Louth
