County: Laois Site name: KILMINCHY
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 13:88 Licence number: 99E0390
Author: Finola O'Carroll
Site type: Castle - unclassified
Period/Dating: Post Medieval (AD 1600-AD 1750)
ITM: E 649450m, N 699693m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.045604, -7.262533
Pre-development test-trenching was undertaken at Kilminchy, near Portlaoise, where an area of 150 acres of farmland is being developed. The land is gently undulating, and the soils are generally light and sandy. Some features had been noted in the extant farm buildings that suggested the possibility that they incorporated earlier structures (Sweetman et al. 1995). The work was undertaken at the request of the managing director, Mr Colman Buckley, who had noted an arc of a stone wall now incorporated into a modern hayshed, which may be part of Kilminchy Castle, location now unknown, or of the Mail Coach Stables that subsequently existed on the site.
Five trenches were excavated at different locations on the site by mechanical digger using a ditching bucket. No material of medieval date was uncovered. The arc of a wall was not of medieval construction but was the inner face of a three-sided bay with projecting buttresses. This was constructed of roughly coursed random rubble, and the buttresses were both built of squared, dressed blocks. The wall survived to a depth below present ground level of 2.25m and was clearly a foundation level. This appeared from the map evidence to be the central bay of a building that also had projecting bays at either end. The wall had been broken through by the insertion of a slurry tank on the east side and was not followed on the west side.
A survey of the cartographic evidence for the area showed that, while a possible tower-house was indicated on the Down Survey map of the area, drawn c. 1650, the symbol for a 'gentleman's residence' was used on Taylor and Skinner's map of 1778 (Taylor and Skinner 1783), with the note 'FitzGerald Esq.'. Based on parallels with other such features, for example at Anneville, Co. Westmeath (Craig 1976, 103–4), a building date in the mid-18th century is likely.
An ongoing programme of field-walking as the fields are ploughed is being carried out as part of the archaeological investigations of the site as a whole.
References
Craig, M. 1976 Classic Irish houses of the middle size. London.
Sweetman, P.D., Alcock, O. and Moran, B. 1995 Archaeological inventory of County Laois. Dublin.
Taylor, G. and Skinner, A. 1783 Maps of the roads of Ireland.
CRDS Ltd, Unit 4, Dundrum Business Park, Dundrum, Dublin 14.
