County: Offaly Site name: BANAGHER
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 21:3 Licence number: 97E0444 ext.
Author: Jacinta Kiely, Eachtra Archaeological Projects
Site type: Town defences
Period/Dating: Post Medieval (AD 1600-AD 1750)
ITM: E 600310m, N 715112m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.186464, -7.995351
The construction phase of the sewerage works in Banagher was monitored. Initial monitoring of the scheme, undertaken in 1997, was previously reported (Excavations 1997, 146–7).
The trenches varied from 1m to 2m wide and from 1.5m to 3.5m deep. No archaeological stratigraphy, features or artefacts were recorded from the trenches on Cuba Avenue, Lusmagh Road, the area of the Marina, Crank Road or Main Street, or the areas of the pumping stations.
A limestone wall, recorded in the manhole K1, and the return of a wall, recorded in the sewer trench between N4 and N3, were uncovered in the area of the Constabulary Barracks. It is possible that these walls were associated with the 17th-century fort.
A ditch, 4m wide and 1.5m deep, was recorded in the rising-main trench between B3 (Main Street) and the Crank Road. Four fills were recorded in the ditch. No artefacts were recovered. The ditch may be the 17th-century town earthworks. It lies 15m south-west of the line of the town defences as proposed by the Urban Archaeological Survey of County Offaly. According to a plantation map of the town, which dates to c. 1629, the town was defended on three sides by an earthwork, linear in plan except to the north-east, where there was a projecting bulwark. No evidence of the earthwork was recorded in the area of M8, east of the Marina Pumping Station.
Clover Hill, Mallow, Co. Cork
