County: Derry Site name: LOUGH ENAGH
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 14:12, 14:65 Licence number: —
Author: Cormac McSparron, Northern Archaeological Consultancy Ltd.
Site type: House- Neolithic
Period/Dating: Neolithic (4000BC-2501 BC)
ITM: E 647173m, N 919847m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 55.023934, -7.262267
Before the construction of a housing development at Enagh, Co. Derry, c. 2 miles from the city centre, close to the River Foyle, monitoring was carried out. Three sites were identified and excavated.
Site 1 lay c. 250m east of Lough Enagh West (C46761983). It was at a height of c. 10m OD. It consisted of a number of postholes and pits cut into subsoil along the route of the proposed road and an area of charcoal and stone settings a few metres to the south of these. Pottery of probable Bronze Age date was recovered from the pits/postholes and from hill-wash material deposited around the stone settings to the south. Only the northern pits/postholes were under threat, so only these were fully excavated. The other features were planned and then covered in plastic and fine gravel. It seems reasonable to suggest that the features excavated to the north of the site were part of one or more buildings.
Site 2 lay c. 650m west-north-west of Site 1 (C46242030), 650m north-west of Lough Enagh West, on the western side of a high ridge overlooking the River Foyle, which is only c. 200m to the west. The site is c. 32.5m OD. It was a Neolithic house of rectangular shape, c. 6.2m x 4.3m. The wall foundations were stone-packed slots, which appeared to contain postholes. At two corners large stone-packed postholes were found, and it can be presumed that similar postholes would have existed at the other corners. There was one small, internal posthole fairly close to centre of the structure's interior, and this was likely to have been a roof support. There was no evidence of a hearth or an entrance, probably because of disturbance caused by deep ploughing over many years, which truncated the archaeological features. Some Western Neolithic pottery was found in the construction slots, and a flint knife was found in one of the external postholes.
The developers agreed to move their service trenches in order not to disturb the archaeology, so the house was not totally excavated. But a complete plan of the surviving archaeology and cross-sections of the wall slots and corner post-holes was made before the site was covered in gravel and plastic.
Site 3 (C46412029) lay c. 300m to the east of Site 2, c. 41m OD. It was a large pit, 3m x 2.6m, filled with ash and loam. It contained some Western Neolithic pottery. This site also was not under further threat and so was planned, sampled and cross-sectioned before being covered.
A full report of this excavation, including site drawings, photos and finds illustrations, can be found on the Internet at homepage.virgin.net/na.c/ index.html.
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