County: Antrim Site name: PORTMUCK, Islandmagee
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 41.4 Licence number: AE/00/15
Author: Alastair Rees, CFA Archaeology Ltd.
Site type: Settlement deserted - medieval
Period/Dating: Late Medieval (AD 1100-AD 1599)
ITM: E 745950m, N 902189m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.846260, -5.727386
During June and July 2000, the remains of part of a rural medieval settlement were excavated before the laying of electricity cables at Portmuck, Islandmagee, Co. Antrim. The work was undertaken following the location of the site during a watching brief of topsoiling works associated with the laying of electricity cable trenches. The work was commissioned by Northern Ireland Electricity through Farrans Construction.
A medieval, rectangular, aisled building with semicircular gables, with an approximate diameter of 8.5m, was discovered. Only the southern gable section and part of the western wall of an assumed north–south-aligned building were exposed. It is thought that the building was of timber construction, with a postulated line of central load-bearing posts sited on post-pads along its central axis. Evidence for the type of wall construction could be seen in two places where the building’s foundation trench had been cut through softer, natural, greenish-grey clays. Two parallel lines of circular and sub-oval stake impressions were visible in the base of each foundation trench. The better-preserved of the two sections of stake impressions was sited at the gable end of the building. The less well-defined section was sited along the western side of the building. It is believed that these sub-oval impressions are evidence of a double palisade of laced timbers against which turfs may have been placed or to which a wattle framework was attached.
A metalled trackway, the collapsed remnants of a possible boundary wall slumped into a ditch, a ‘sink’ feature, a series of gullies/palisades and a series of straight and curving sections of stone-filled shallow ditches were also discovered and excavated. Quantities of animal bone, some metal finds and a large assemblage of medieval pottery were recovered.
The site is probably closely associated with the site of the church and graveyard of the medieval grange of Inch Abbey of Portmuck, 75m to the north, of which no visible trace now remains.
Post-excavation work on the pottery, bone, metal and other finds has begun at the Department of Archaeology and Palaeopathology, Queen’s University, Belfast, under the direction of Sarah Gormley and Colm Donnelly.
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