1998:055 - ADRIGOLE, Cork

This site, on the south side of the Beara Peninsula, lies at the foot of Adrigole Mountain, which rises steeply to the north-west, and overlooks a plateau that slopes gently southwards towards the Adrigole River, close to where it flows into Adrigole Harbour.

The site is to be developed as a tourist amenity, and test-trenching and monitoring were required as the site is the location of a 17th/18th-century iron foundry (Power et al. 1992, 384).

A rectangular, one-storey, stone-built structure measuring 5.55m x 3.17m internally, with walls c. 0.65m thick, and c. 1.75m high survives on the site. It is depicted on the 1st edition 6-inch OS map as 'Old Furnace'. However, the present ruin is more likely to be a 19th/20th-century farm shed rather than a remnant of the 17th/18th-century ironworks, although it is probably built on their foundations.

A number of test-trenches were excavated in the area, but only those closest to the ruined structure contained archaeological remains. In a north-south trench, excavated immediately to the west of the ruin, a 2.55m-wide mortared stone wall foundation was uncovered directly under the thin sod. The wall was aligned west-north-west/east-south-east and was in line with the south wall of the ruined structure. The north face of the wall had been reddened by intense heat, and the area for c. 2.5m to the north was a mass of burnt stone rubble with some vitrified stone and iron slag.

On the east side of the ruin another trench, running north-south, was excavated. Near its north end was the base of a broad channel running east-west with a 0.05–0.1m-thick layer of black silt at its base. Over the remainder of the trench a c. 0.2m-deep layer of iron slag and vitrified stone lay underneath the sod. Beneath this layer, at the southern end of the trench, was a 0.3m-deep layer of bright red burnt stone. A thin (0.04m) layer of white clay lay underneath the stone, with a layer of sand under the clay.

Further remains of the silted channel were uncovered in a trench c. 13m west of the ruin.

Other trenches excavated further away from the ruin revealed no archaeological remains, nor did monitoring of development works on the western half of the development area.

The massive foundations and burnt stone uncovered to the west of the existing ruin suggest a furnace or foundry to the west of, and possibly running underneath, the ruin. The silted channel in the trenches to the east and west suggests a water channel running east-west, to the immediate north of the foundry, providing the power to drive the bellows wheel. The large quantities of slag and vitrified stone uncovered in the trench to the east of the ruin suggest a slag heap to the east of the foundry. The evidence, as a whole, suggests a site layout remarkably similar to that of a charcoal blast furnace shown in the Dictionary of industrial archaeology (Jones 1996, 29).

Local information indicates that a more extensive complex of buildings survived on the site into recent times, but these were demolished within living memory.

References
Power, D. et al. 1992 Archaeological inventory of County Cork, vol. 1. Dublin. Wordwell.
Jones, W. 1996 Dictionary of industrial archaeology. Gloucestershire. Sutton Publishing Ltd.

Ballynanelagh, Rathcormac, Co. Cork