1999:076 - BANDON: Macsweeny Quay, Cork

In compliance with a condition of planning permission, test-trenching was carried out before the construction of apartments and retail outlets. The site is on MacSweeny Quay and is within the line of the town walls of Bandon. Scale's map of Bandon in 1775 shows the area of the site to be occupied by formal gardens with no structure. The area seems likely to have remained undeveloped until Burlington (now MacSweeny) Quay was built in the early 19th century.

A cotton mill was constructed by the Scott family on the site in 1835. This had closed by 1840, and the site was acquired by the milling company J.P. Deasy & Sons, who established a provender mill on it in 1927. The site was periodically upgraded and expanded during the following decades and remained in use until recent times. A substantial portion of the original mill building survives, though now in ruins.

Test-trenching was carried out in April 1999. Two trenches, one 17m long and one 7m long, were excavated on the eastern side of the site in the areas least likely to have been disturbed by modern development. The stratigraphy in both trenches was very similar, but the depth varied. It consisted of a build-up of 0.4–0.9m depth of modern material (stone chippings etc.) lying on a c. 0.6m-deep layer of silty loam, which in turn lay on natural gravels. The silty loam layer contained several sherds of post-medieval and 18th/19th-century pottery. No archaeological features were noted.

Ballynanelagh, Rathcormac, Co. Cork