County: Louth Site name: HAGGARDSTOWN
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 95E0126
Author: Cia McConway, ADS Ltd
Site type: Souterrain
Period/Dating: Early Medieval (AD 400-AD 1099)
ITM: E 706728m, N 803011m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.965369, -6.373433
Blackrock is a small seaside town some 5km south of Dundalk, Co. Louth. During the course of land reduction at an ongoing housing development in Haggardstown, Blackrock, the passageway of a souterrain was encroached upon.
Under supervision and using a small toothless bucket, a machine was employed to reveal the extent of the souterrain by uncovering the capstones and to investigate the possibility of an enclosing ditch.
The area to the east of the breached passageway had already been levelled down to bedrock, while the area containing the souterrain had been scarped considerably, leaving only a very thin covering of scrub and grass on the natural shaly subsoil.
By following at first the upper capstones it could be determined that the passageway survived for 10m east-west before turning sharply south, running for a further 11m leading to a single, badly collapsed, chamber. The north-south passageway was traced by following not the capstones but the overlying counter-balancing boulders which lay on the outer edges of the capstones. It was infilled with a charcoal-rich and shell-flecked brown dirty soil. Defining the limit of the chamber was made possible only by following a dirty infilled yellow/brown soil flecked with shell, bone and charcoal, which contrasted sharply with the surrounding yellow subsoil. The chamber was apparently subrectangular in shape and measured 3.5m x 5m.
The outer width of the passage measured up to 1.5m and the internal width, as measured near the breached entrance, 0.85m. The walls of the souterrain consisted of a finely built drystone walling of shale and slate, the local stone. It was not possible to crawl into the souterrain as rubble had been recently dumped within the entrance to block access. For this reason it was not possible to determine whether a rock-cut or stone-lined floor underlay the compacted clay just visible beneath the rubble.
A single pit was seen in section south of the breached passageway and to the east of the chamber. It was 1m wide and 1m deep and filled with a black/grey clayey soil with stones, charcoal, shell and animal bone. It had been truncated by the recent ground reduction and cut through into the natural boulder clay.
A series of strips was opened up surrounding the souterrain to reveal the location of a single enclosing ditch some 29–30m in diameter. The ditch could not be traced along the south of the site, which presumably indicates that the entrance to the enclosure was located just south of the souterrain chamber. A section was cut through the ditch to reveal dimensions of 3.4m wide and 1.8m deep. The ditch was filled with organic-rich deposits of shell and bone within a yellow/brown clay. There was no trace of an associated bank.
The souterrain was located within a simple univallate ringfort or rath, a characteristic settlement of the Early Christian period, AD 400–1200.
Power House, Pigeon House Harbour, Dublin 4
