County: Mayo Site name: LECARROW
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 98E0458
Author: Gerry Walsh, Áras An Chondae, Mayo County Council
Site type: No archaeology found
Period/Dating: N/A
ITM: E 524600m, N 825021m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.168624, -9.154708
Pre-development testing was undertaken on the site of a proposed modern graveyard extension, west of Crossmolina, Co. Mayo. This writer had noted a previously unrecorded possible archaeological mound on top of a natural hill at the rear of the graveyard. Three test-trenches were excavated by machine adjacent to the mound.
In Trenches 1 and 2 the sod/topsoil layer overlay boulder clay or bedrock. In the southern half of Trench 3 the sod/topsoil directly overlay the limestone bedrock. At a point 15m from the northern end of the trench the stratigraphy changed. It appears that in the recent past some gravel had been extracted from the hill and some small stones, possibly collected from field clearance, were backfilled into the gravel pit. For a distance of c. 10m a stone fill layer, 0.65m thick, directly underlay the sod. Underlying this stone fill layer was a layer of brown clay 0.5m thick, which in turn overlay another layer of stone fill, 0.4m thick. This lower layer of stone fill directly overlay the bedrock. The layers of fill were backfilled and graded to coincide with the contours of the hill.
No archaeological features or small finds were recovered from any of the test-trenches.
Castlebar, Co. Mayo
