1998:113 - OLD BRIDGE COURT, Ballyvalley, Banbridge, Down
County: Down
Site name: OLD BRIDGE COURT, Ballyvalley, Banbridge
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A
Licence number: SMR 27:89
Author: Alan Reilly, Northern Archaeological Consultancy Ltd.
Author/Organisation Address: Unit 6, Farset Enterprise Centre, Springfield Road, Belfast
Site type: Ringfort - unclassified
Period/Dating: Early Medieval (AD 400-AD 1099)
ITM: E 712077m, N 845592m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.346685, -6.276127
The site lay in the Old Bridge Court development on the Ballygowan Road on the outskirts of Banbridge, in the townland of Ballyvalley, Co. Down. The site was a fragmentary remnant of a ringfort that had been nearly totally levelled in the 1960s. OS maps indicated that it had an internal diameter of c. 25m. A remnant of the bank has been incorporated into a hedge. This was particularly obvious from the south-west side of the hedge, outside the development site, where it could be seen as a distinct arc (c. 16m long). The bank was 1.3m high and 4m wide. Unmonitored restripping and levelling during the current development may have further truncated any ditch remains.
A 4m-wide strip between the house foundations and the south-western boundary of the site was machine-stripped but produced no trace of the ditch. The straightening and cleaning of the south-western boundary section revealed the base of the ditch a few centimetres above the present site level, so no trace of the ditch survived. The only surviving trace of the ringfort was the section of ditch in the south-western boundary of the development. This section was straightened with a view to drawing it.
The original ditch cut was roughly 1.5m deep by 3m wide. It was an irregular V-shape in profile. At some recent date a broad, shallow, U-shaped pipe-trench had cut through the earlier ditch. This cut removed the eastern edge of the older cut and the eastern part of the original upper fills. The original stratigraphy of the ditch fill could only be seen in the western, lower half of the ditch. It appears that minor silting had occurred, emanating from the external (eastern) edge of the ditch, represented by inspilling lines. After the deposition of these fills there seems to have been a large deposit that emanated from the internal (western) side of the ringfort ditch. This was probably slump from the internal bank of the ringfort.
The lower silts of the ditch have been sampled and submitted for radiocarbon dating and environmental analysis.