County: Fermanagh Site name: AGHAVEA CHURCH, Aghavea
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 231:36 Licence number: 00E0227
Author: Ruairí Ó Baoill, Archaeological Excavation Unit, EHS
Site type: Ecclesiastical enclosure
Period/Dating: Medieval (AD 400-AD 1600)
ITM: E 637003m, N 838834m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.296933, -7.431556
Archaeological assessment and, later, limited excavation were carried out during April and from June to August 2000 at a greenfield site opposite Aghavea Church of Ireland church in County Fermanagh. The church sits within an ecclesiastical enclosure of early date. Plans by the parishioners to build a new church hall opposite the church, and within the extrapolated confines of the church enclosure, necessitated archaeological investigation, the brief being to excavate that area where archaeological deposits were to be destroyed and to record exposed archaeological features everywhere else.
Archaeological investigation showed the site to be multi-period and to contain significant archaeological deposits and features across the whole area, dating to the Early Christian and medieval periods. Major features encountered included a ditch with internal palisade slot over which a structure was later built, various enclosure ditches, a metalled roadway leading to the church, and areas of industrial activity in the form of bowl furnaces and Early Christian ditches.
Finds included Early Christian pottery, lignite and glass beads; medieval finds included coarse, locally made pottery, metalwork, a fragment of a quernstone reused as a sharpening stone, and an early 15th-century coin.
5–33 Hill Street, Belfast BT1 2LA
