County: Dublin Site name: HERENFORD LANE, Carrickmines
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 26:71 Licence number: 97E0360
Author: E. Eoin Sullivan, c/o Margaret Gowan
Site type: Field system
Period/Dating: Undetermined
ITM: E 722961m, N 722642m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.239909, -6.157861
Archaeological test-trenching at Herenford Lane, Carrickmines, Co. Dublin, took place between 29 September and 1 October 1997. The site is at the northern end of Herenford Lane within the townland of Ticknock and Laughanstown, within the valley of the Loughlinstown River, on agricultural land. The Loughlinstown River is known for its extensive range of sites, which indicate settlement from the early prehistoric period up to medieval times, as indicated by the 16th-century Puck's Castle. Herenford Lane is regarded as the old road to Bray and an important highway in medieval times.
A substantial portion of the SMR site was planted with mature forest. The site is within the proposed line of a gas pipeline. All trenches were 22m in length to correspond to the width of the pipeline corridor, and were oriented in an east-west direction.
The site under assessment was located within a field system identified through aerial photography. The archaeological assessment was undertaken to identify whether there were any remains of field walls, archaeological soils or features along the line of the proposed gas pipeline. There were no surface indications of a field system at the time of the trenching.
Seven trenches were mechanically excavated in open land along the proposed line of the pipeline. They were excavated to a depth of 0.8m and had a similar stratigraphy, consisting of poor-quality topsoil underlain by a compact silt/clay which covered the stony subsoil. Trench 2 contained a small U-shaped pit which was cut into the natural brown clay to a maximum depth of 0.18m. The basal fill of the pit consisted of a thin layer of charcoal, overlain by a light brown clay. No artefacts were discovered within the fill.
Trenches 2, 3, 4 and 7 contained sizeable outcrops of granite which were visible throughout the field. In Trench 7 the granite outcrop measured 2m in width. These features were natural and were of no archaeological significance.
The excavated test-trenches failed to produce any indications of the presence of field boundaries along the proposed pipeline route. It was impossible to identify a date for the pit in Trench 2 on the basis of test-trenching. No further excavation was deemed necessary, but licensed monitoring was recommended should any further ground disturbance occur at the north-east of the site.
Rath House, Ferndale Road, Rathmichael, Co. Dublin
