County: Longford Site name: BALLINALEE/SAINT JOHNSTOWN
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 96E0196 ext.
Author: Judith Carroll, Pine Forest Art Centre
Site type: Structure
Period/Dating: Undetermined
ITM: E 622200m, N 780726m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.775653, -7.663201
The purpose of this excavation, carried out on 26–7 January 1998, was to have an anomalous stone structure of no known archaeological significance removed from a site being developed by Longford County Council. The site lies in Ballinalee village between the disused graveyard and the Longford road. Before development in 1996 the site had been extensively excavated (Excavations 1996, 72). During those excavations cuttings were brought up very close to the stone structure, but, apart from 18th/19th-century garden features, nothing of archaeological significance was found in the area of this feature.
The stone structure stood at the western end of the site and consisted of four large, thin, stone slabs, forming three sides of a rough box (c. 1.5m high and 1.05m wide), with one slab acting as a capstone. At the foot of the structure was a rough, slightly corbelled portion of stone wall. The feature has no parallels in any known monument type. It was surveyed and photographed before removal. The feature was then dismantled and the ground beneath it brought down to natural subsoil. No remains of archaeological significance were found.
Pine Forest Road, Glencullen, Co. Dublin
