County: Louth Site name: FARRANDREG
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 95E0109 ext.
Author: Deirdre Murphy, Archaeological Consultancy Services Ltd.
Site type: Souterrain
Period/Dating: Early Medieval (AD 400-AD 1099)
ITM: E 702929m, N 808010m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.011042, -6.429620
Construction work at Farrandreg, Castletown, Dundalk, Co. Louth, revealed the dry-stone air vent of a souterrain on top of a prominent, flat-topped rise east of Farrandreg House. Ten souterrains lie within a one-mile radius of the site.
Archaeological assessment uncovered a dark stain marking the line of a backfilled souterrain against the yellow, compact, natural, sandy clay. A trial-trench revealed a dark, soft, humic deposit, which contained lenses of charcoal, ash and stone. The walls of the souterrain were recovered at 0.96m below the surface. They were built from large, irregular blocks of limestone, which were corbelled towards the top, standing up to 1.04m high. A thin layer of redeposited natural underlay the fill and in turn overlay a large stone lintel. It was evident that further passages existed below. Full excavation then took place.
The souterrain was entered through a narrow creep that ran east and west. The eastern section led to a large, rectangular chamber, up to 2.8m wide, 4.4m long and 1m high, with a central wall for supporting lintels. The western passage led to the substantial oblong chamber first discovered in testing. From this, two lower chambers were entered through a semicircular drop-hole. The first was 8.5m long, up to 1.3m wide and between 1.04m and 1.5m high. It was the terminal point of the air vent. The second was entered through a semicircular drop-hole. Four rectangular slots were positioned over the drop-hole and contained charcoal, suggesting a trap-door entrance. The lower chamber was partially cut from bedrock and opened substantially towards the west. It was 7.5m long, between 1.1m and 2m wide and up to 2.1m high. Lintels had been robbed from all the upper chambers, while the latter two were intact and had evidently not been entered. The upper chambers were filled with occupation debris, i.e. black loam with frequent lenses of ash and charcoal, evidently settlement debris from occupation above.
Finds included stick pins, souterrain ware, a fragmentary rotary quern, bone needles, a bone comb, worked flint and animal bone. It appears from the stratigraphical record that the lintels were robbed in antiquity, owing to the lack of any finds datable to later than the 12th century. Post-excavation work is ongoing, and the souterrain has been backfilled.
15 Trinity Street, Drogheda, Co. Louth
