1996:255 - BULLY'S ACRE, Ballinalee, Longford

NMI Burial Excavation Records

County: Longford Site name: BULLY'S ACRE, Ballinalee

Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 96E0196

Author: Judith Carroll

Site type: Excavation - miscellaneous

Period/Dating: Undetermined

ITM: E 622146m, N 782016m

Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.787244, -7.663928

The small County Longford town of Ballinalee, situated on the Camlin River, a tributary of the Shannon, is the main town in the parish of Clonbroney. It was formerly called St Johnstown and is an important seventeenth-century plantation town.

Excavation over six weeks in July and August 1996 took place in the field south of the disused graveyard in Ballinalee, prior to development of OAP dwellings there. The reason for the excavation was that trial-trenching assessment carried out in 1995 revealed evidence for a burial (Excavations 1995, 56), while the site itself may have been close to a ecclesiastical site of archaeological significance. In the Down Survey map there seems to have been an enclosure, marked 'Kiltenemedron', on the same spot as the site, though there is no further historical record of this enclosure. On the same map it is recorded that in the early to mid-seventeenth century large tracts of land, as part of the plantation policy, came into the possession of various loyal Protestant subjects. James Ware, the eminent historian, whose land can be seen marked on the Down Survey map, was one of the new beneficiaries.

The finds and features from the excavation consisted of a human skull, which was located in the intersecting point of two linear features, one at least of which was almost certainly a trench supporting wooden stakes or posts. These linear features were followed and were found to be at least 24m in length, No more burials were found and the linear features may have constituted post-medieval fences. There were no pottery finds diagnostic of a date earlier than the late seventeenth century.

It is very likely that the features found could relate to the seventeenth-century plantation town of St Johnstown, which seems to have been west of the present village, as can be seen on the Down Survey map. However, the probable palisade trench cannot be proven to relate to the plantation town, for which a fortification of some sort (normally a bank and ditch) would have been expected.

30 Ramleh Park, Milltown, Dublin 6