1999:790 - INISHCRONE: Main Street (Carrowhubbuck South), Sligo

Two commercial buildings are to be constructed on a small plot, 76m by 33m, on Main Street, Inishcrone, Co. Sligo. At the rear of the site is a small earthwork that should probably be classified as a barrow. Redundant fencing, abandoned window frames, wire and rubbish protruded through the long grass on the barrow. The foundations of recent housing remained at the front of the plot.

The earthwork consists of an oval, dished area surrounded by a bank of varying height. It measures 17m east-west by 14.7m. The internal, dished area measures 9.9m east-west by 11m. The bank is 2–2.7m wide and stands at most 1.5m above the ground outside and 1.15m above the interior; the bank is no more than 0.2m over the interior in places. These dimensions were recorded after monitored removal of the long grass and tidying of the barrow. The build-up of blown sea sand against the west side of the monument gives the illusion that the bank on that side is much more substantial than elsewhere.

The present condition of the barrow resembles that of the one at Deechomede, Co. Sligo, SMR 39:9, excavated by Farrelly and Keane in 1992 and 1993 (Excavations 1992, 56; Excavations 1993, 71, 92E0119) and dated to the Early Iron Age.

Monitoring revealed that beneath the sod of the area stripped for the building and the carpark was a layer of blown sea sand below which was a thin layer of soil over the brittle bedrock. Throughout the sod and sand were many discarded pieces of modern metal, china, glass, plastic and animal bones. Local information was that between 30 and 40 years ago there was a butcher shop at the front of the plot and the butcher used to bury surplus bones and offal within the centre of the earthwork and elsewhere throughout the plot. No archaeology was discovered in the monitoring.

Bóthar An Corran, Keash, Co. Sligo