County: Derry Site name: BELLAGHY: 20 Castle Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: —
Author: Ruairí Ó Baoill, Archaeological Development Services Ltd.
Site type: Excavation - miscellaneous
Period/Dating: Modern (AD 1750-AD 2000)
ITM: E 695231m, N 896591m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.808186, -6.518610
Excavation was undertaken at the cleared site of No. 20 Castle Street, Bellaghy, Co. Derry, from 3 to 19 August 1998 to try and find the archaeological remains of Plantation houses and property boundaries illustrated on the 1622 Thomas Raven map of the village. A school and yard, built in 1898, most recently occupied the site.
A trench, oriented north-east/south-west, was excavated from between halfway along the street frontage to approximately halfway along the wall of the adjoining property (No. 22 Castle Street). In this way it was hoped to pick up both the front and back walls of any surviving structures, as well as to reveal as whether the street frontage and plot boundaries in this part of the village had changed significantly since the 17th century.
The excavated trench had a maximum length, north-east/south-west, of 14.5m, and width, north-west/south-east, of 2m. A maximum of 1.16m of stratigraphy was encountered within the trench. At least two phases of post-medieval activity were encountered. The first phase took the form of several large pits cut into the subsoil in the east of the site. The second, and later, phase took the form of a rough cobbled surface overlying the earlier pits and a brick setting in the west of the site.
Finds were predominantly ceramic and 18th-20th century in date. Clay pipe, iron nails, bottle glass, red brick and slate were also uncovered.
No evidence of the original 17th-century Plantation village was uncovered during the excavation. Not even evidence of robbed-out building foundation trenches was found. Local people who visited the excavation informed the archaeologists that the subsoil on the site was different from that encountered elsewhere in the village, which, it was said, consisted of compact clays and gravels. It may be that early in the history of the settlement this particular area of ground was found to be unsuitable for the erection of buildings and that, instead, the sand was exploited for construction elsewhere (borrow pits).
Alternatively, it may be that the original street frontage has been altered considerably since the early 17th century and that the original line of the street lies further to the east in the site, perhaps under the 19th-century school.
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