County: Kilkenny Site name: GRANGE
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 99E0600
Author: Paul Stevens for Margaret Gowen & Co. Ltd.
Site type: Fulacht fia
Period/Dating: Prehistoric (12700 BC-AD 400)
ITM: E 643413m, N 669637m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.776019, -7.356571
This site is 1.5km south-west of Ballyragget and was revealed during archaeological monitoring of a Bord Gáis Éireann gas pipeline development (see No. 426 Excavations 1999). Excavation was carried out in August 1999 before development. The site lay within a significant cluster of archaeological sites, all within 1km of the site: two or three other possible fulachta fiadh, two possible ring-barrows, a ring-ditch complex and five enclosure sites.
This site extended beyond the area of excavation and consisted of a heavily denuded fulacht fiadh, with patches of burnt mound spread, a large and a small truncated circular trough and a small pit feature, all partially truncated by modern and post-medieval drainage activity. Natural subsoil on the site was orange/brown boulder clay. The underlying topography was undulating land along the western flood-plain of the River Nore. The site was also 75m south of a small stream.
Trough A was a heavily truncated subcircular trough, situated to the west, with a concave profile and a flat, regular base. It measured 2.5–3.6m in diameter and 0.75m in depth and contained a deliberate backfill of burnt mound material, which decommissioned the trough.
Trough B was a small pit-trough, within the centre of the site, partly truncated by a pipe-trench. It was oval with concave sides and a flat base. It measured 1.5m north-south by 1.3m by 0.3m deep and was also deliberately backfilled by burnt mound material, with a high charcoal content.
A third feature was a small, circular pit stratigraphically sealed by the burnt mound, 0.6m south of Trough A. It had a concave profile and measured 1m in diameter and 0.3m in depth, filled by a dark grey, silty clay with burnt mound material inclusions.
The truncated and heavily ploughed-out roughly circular mound was made up of fire-cracked sandstone measuring between 0.2m and 0.15m in individual diameters, with charcoal lumps and dark brown, silty clay. The mound, which was not visible before excavation, covered an area of over 12.5m east-west (continuing under both baulks), 12m north-south and 0.1m in truncated depth.
Following the decommissioning of the site (by pushing the mound into the troughs), the resulting hollow silted up with a dark grey, silty peat post-dating the burnt mound. Modern and possibly earlier, post-medieval drainage activity on this site was evidenced by a number of pipe-trenches and drainage ditches criss-crossing the site.
2 Killiney View, Albert Road Lower, Glenageary, Co. Dublin
