County: Meath Site name: LACKANASH, Trim
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 99E0246
Author: Rosanne Meenan
Site type: Cultivation ridges
Period/Dating: Modern (AD 1750-AD 2000)
ITM: E 682833m, N 757221m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.558363, -6.749771
An assessment was requested by Meath County Council as a requirement for further information following the lodging of a planning application for 199 houses. In addition the ESB intends to run underground cables across part of the site, coming in from the Lackanash road, where a pylon is to be constructed, and then running eastwards into the adjoining housing estate
There are no recorded monuments in the SMR for the townland. The site is between Trim and Newtown Trim, and it is likely that medieval remains survive at some point here, along with the possible survival of earlier monuments. Both fields retain evidence for ridge-and-furrow cultivation, possibly dating to the 18th century.
There is a tradition of an old road running along the southern boundary of the site, surviving in the portion of the field that runs parallel to the Lackanash road. The feature is represented by a flat area defined on the north side by a shallow ditch that slopes up to the area of the field to the north, which retains its evidence for ridge-and-furrow cultivation. The course of the ditch meanders slightly; it is c. 4m wide at the top. A small channel was cut through the north side of the ditch, which may represent a drainage feature.
The surface of the 'road' is level. If it was an old road it is not marked as such on the first edition of the OS 6-inch map and may therefore have been out of use by the 1830s. It has been built over by the houses that now front the Lackanash road to the west of the development.
The ridge and furrow respected the line of the feature, suggesting that it was in existence when the furrows were dug. Two of the fifteen trenches tested the area of the possible road, one of them in the location of the proposed pylon.
Cutting 1, a 19m-long trench, tested the possible old road, across its surface, through the ditch and through the higher ground on its north side. Ploughsoil 0.4m deep overlay yellow, sandier material 0.3m deep, overlying grey, very sandy gravel. The latter two layers were natural, and the interface between them was marked by an amount of decayed stone.
There was no evidence for a road surface underneath the sod. Both the ploughsoil and the underlying natural layers were featureless apart from the disturbance caused by the ditch along the south side of the 'road'. A stone shore was inserted at the bottom of the ditch, the top level of which was no more than 0.5m below the sod level. The shore comprised a layer of rough stones 0.5m wide. The maximum width of the ditch at the top was 2.2m. The fill of the cut of the ditch was the same material as the ploughsoil.
Cutting 7 tested the location of the proposed electricity pylon. It was within the area of the old roadway, but there appeared to have been some disturbance here caused by the piping of the ditch immediately to the west, which emerges into the ditch along the boundary of this site. Material may also have been dumped from the property immediately to the west.
The stratigraphy comprised grey ploughsoil 0.3m deep, overlying a layer of yellow clay 0.6m deep. These layers overlay a dark grey, natural, sandy gravel. The maximum depth of the trench was 1.5m.
At the south end of the trench a layer of stone immediately under the sod was exposed. These were small stones and did not have a consistent pattern, suggesting that the layer had been laid down during dumping of material in recent times.
Archaeological material was not exposed in this trench.
The other trenches revealed ploughsoil overlying mixed glacial layer deposits.
Some months later a trench for an ESB cable was excavated across the site. This was monitored. The same sequence of deposits was exposed here as in the test-trenches.
Roestown, Drumree, Co. Meath
