County: Dublin Site name: CENTRAL BANK OF IRELAND, Balally
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 96E0218
Author: Colin D. Gracie, for Project Director Valerie J. Keeley Ltd.
Site type: Ecclesiastical enclosure, Church and Designed landscape - tree-ring
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 718025m, N 726028m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.271438, -6.230514
As part of the proposed South-Eastern Motorway scheme,trial-trenching was carried out in an area affected by four suspected sites.
Site I
A ditch was discovered, running for 63m across the proposed route, lying in line with a section of the Pale ditch preserved in the Kilcross housing estate to the south. Adjacent to the ditch was a bank which appeared to have been naturally formed and had the foundations of a nineteenth-century structure dug into it. Immediately north of the ditch, a fragment of a flint plano-convex knife was found in the topsoil. It is hoped that a full excavation will be carried out on this site.
Site II
Testing was carried out near to the site of St Olaf's Church (SMR 22:36). This had previously been investigated in 1990 by C. Mount and V.J. Keeley (Excavations 1990, 23–4); however, there had been subsequent alterations to the motorway route. No archaeological features were discovered and the church will not be affected by the motorway.
Site III
A circular cropmark was identified by aerial photography as lying just outside the proposed route. Testing within the route adjacent to this feature did not reveal anything of archaeological importance.
Site IV
A tree ring lay within the proposed motorway route. Investigations showed that whilst the tree ring was of nineteenth-century date, it overlay pit features, one of which con-rained two fragments of thirteenth/fourteenth-century locally produced cooking ware. It is hoped that further work will be carried out on this site.
8 Abbeydale Close, Lucan, Co. Dublin
