County: Wicklow Site name: KILQUADE
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 98E0143
Author: Christiaan Corlett
Site type: No archaeology found
Period/Dating: N/A
ITM: E 727972m, N 707827m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.105657, -6.088761
Testing was carried out in advance of a residential development immediately south and south-west of a recorded monument (SMR 13:21), classified as a church (possible site), from which the townland name, Kilquade (Cill (mh)ic Uaid, 'MacQuaid's church'), presumably derives. Alternatively, the element 'quade' may derive from coimhéad, a 'look-out or watching place'. The present church at Kilquade, St Patrick's RC church, is a modern building. There is no conclusive evidence of an early church here, although a chapel is shown on Nevill's map of the site of 1760. The Chancery Inquisition records a grant of a rent of Killecovat to the Earl of Kildare in 1523, and this appears to be the earliest historical mention of the name Kilquade. The only archaeological evidence of a pre-modern church in Kilquade is provided by a late medieval granite font with a five-sided recess into which a circular bowl is cut, at present standing outside the main door of the church. There are no pre-19th-century grave-slabs in the graveyard.
The area of the proposed development consisted of a roughly L-shaped plot of grazing land on a gentle, west-facing slope of a drumlin ridge and a poorly drained hollow extending north-south across the west edge of the site, which separates this ridge and an adjacent one to the west. Archaeological testing of the area was based on the assessment of six machine-dug trenches (each 10m long and 1m wide and on average 1m deep) excavated in April 1998. Three of the trenches (two east-west and one north-south) were excavated across the south of the site. Three further trenches (two east-west and one north-south) were excavated across the north of the site. Analysis of the six trenches indicated (by the occurrence of china sherds) that the topsoil had been disturbed by ploughing in the 19th century. The underlying subsoils had not been disturbed and consisted of a variety of glacially deposited clays and gravels.
No archaeological features or finds were found in any of the trenches. Therefore, if the current 19-century church at Kilquade is constructed on the site of a late medieval or perhaps an even earlier church it appears that activity associated with such a church did not extend beyond the present southern or south-western limits of the graveyard surrounding the modern church.
88 Heathervue, Greystones, Co. Wicklow
