County: Dublin Site name: CAPPOGE: Ballycoolin Road
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 14:27 Licence number: 99E0724
Author: Franc Myles, Margaret Gowen & Co. Ltd.
Site type: Excavation - miscellaneous
Period/Dating: Undetermined
ITM: E 708799m, N 740782m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.405957, -6.363701
Four test-trenches were mechanically excavated in the field opposite the site of Cappoge Castle on the site of a proposed industrial/warehouse development. Field-walking, previously carried out for the purposes of an EIS, located considerable amounts of medieval pottery and oyster shell in the north-western portion of the site, furthest away from the castle site. Further quantities of oyster shell and sherds of post-medieval pottery were recorded closer to the castle, near a triangular hollow, which was filled with water.
Three of the test-trenches extended radially from that point of the site closest to the castle site for a distance of c. 200m, and a further test-trench was excavated across the north-western portion of the site.
The results of the trenches excavated closest to the site of the castle did not indicate the presence of archaeological deposits. It is likely, therefore, that if associated structures or features existed to the west of the site they are located closer to the castle or underneath the road. Trench 4 did not locate archaeological activity to the north-west of the site. The ploughsoil, however, was rich in pottery, glass and clay pipe fragments. The pottery spanned all periods from the late medieval to the present and was evenly scattered throughout the field.
The evidence from the test-trenching would therefore suggest that the area of the proposed development had always been a greenfield site and that the surface finds were introduced with the topsoil at some period during the last twenty years.
2 Killiney View, Albert Road Lower, Glenageary, Co. Dublin
