County: Tipperary Site name: BALLINTOTTY
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 96E318-AR 30
Author: Cia McConway, Archaeological Development Services Ltd
Site type: House - indeterminate date
Period/Dating: Undetermined
ITM: E 590952m, N 678438m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.856792, -8.134341
A small-scale site assessment was carried out, as part of the Nenagh Bypass assessment, within a wildly overgrown corner of a field bounded by a fast-flowing stream to its north and west. The site lies several hundred metres due north of Ballintotty Castle.
Two small trenches were hand-excavated to reveal stone and mortar walls, standing up to over urn high, enclosing an area of at least 10m x 6m. There was a considerable amount of rumbled stone and shrubbery within the walls, with overgrown trees and shrubbery extending well beyond the eastern wall. The walls themselves had been robbed of both their inner and outer facing stones, leaving an upstanding stone rubble core 0.9m wide. During excavation it was revealed that the foundations and lowest course of the wall had not been robbed (as they had existed primarily below ground level) and had originally measured 1.6m wide.
A trench was opened up just within and abutting the inner face of the western stone wall, uncovering large, densely packed stones and mortar forming a cobbled surface. These cobbles continued in an irregular stratum for a depth of 0.28m, creating an impenetrable metalled floor surface. The cobbles directly overlay the natural subsoil.
A second trench was opened across the eastern wall, showing the continuation of the internal cobbles and revealing a second area of cobbles lying to the east (the outside) of this wall. This cobbled surface was created from much smaller stones, densely set within a dark brown soil, and reached a depth of 0.23m. The cobbles lay on a 0.1m-deep mortared surface, which in turn overlay the natural subsoil.
From the results of the small trenches opened it is clear that the walls form a small though heavily defensive structure, and this is supported by the deeply cobbled internal floor area. This structure may possibly be related to the nearby Ballintotty Castle, as an outreach tower. Other than some small fragments of animal bone, no finds were uncovered which would help to date the structure, though the complete absence of any red brick from either of the walls or the cobbled surfaces would rend to support a pre-seventeenth-century date.
Power House, Pigeon House Harbour, Dublin 4
