County: Leitrim Site name: FARNAGHT
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 00E0867
Author: Rosanne Meenan
Site type: Graveyard
Period/Dating: Undetermined
ITM: E 612096m, N 790395m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.862872, -7.816103
A FÁS scheme undertook the cleaning up of the graveyard here, adjacent to the monument marked as ‘Oratory’ (SMR 36:21) on the OS sheet. The monument may represent the remains of a tower-house rather than an ecclesiastical building (Paddy O’Donovan, pers. comm.). There is no evidence to suggest that the graveyard may be Early Christian or medieval.
The final element of the project was the removal of a 51m-long stretch of crude stone walling along the east side of the graveyard. When the stones were removed, it became clear that they had been thrown up from the interior of the graveyard. They were not coursed or mortared and lay in a matrix of loose, dark brown clay. There was no evidence for a foundation and no trace of an earlier wall. The boundary element elsewhere consisted of well-built stone walling or of iron railing, neither of which was disturbed.
The replacement wall will stand c. 1m high; its foundation trench was 0.4m wide and 0.2m in maximum depth. Nothing of archaeological interest was exposed during the excavation of the trench. No architectural stone was observed.
Roestown, Drumree, Co. Meath
