County: Louth Site name: MELL (5)
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 00E0945
Author: Kieran Campbell, for Valerie J. Keeley Ltd.
Site type: Fulacht fia
Period/Dating: Prehistoric (12700 BC-AD 400)
ITM: E 705658m, N 777492m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.736357, -6.398508
Topsoil removal on the Northern Motorway (Drogheda Bypass) uncovered a spread of burnt mound material with overall dimensions of 13m (north–south) by 8.8m. The site had been truncated on the east and west sides by agricultural drainage and reclamation works of late 19th-century date. A 3m-wide field boundary ditch ran east–west through the north end of the site.
The levelled burnt mound deposit had a maximum thickness of 0.3m and sealed a number of pits filled with similar material. A subrectangular pit, 2.6m x 1.8m and 0.6m deep, with sloping sides becoming vertical towards the base, may have functioned as a trough. Three further pits were oval or subrectangular in shape; the largest measured 2.48m x 1.2m and was 0.36m deep. An isolated pit 7m south of the burnt mound was 0.32m deep and measured 0.95m (north–south) by 0.94m, being truncated on the west by the same agricultural activity that had disturbed the main site. The pit had an upper fill of ashy silt overlying heat-fractured stones. Flint was plentiful on the site, both debitage and nodules derived from the underlying natural gravels.
6 St Ultan’s, Laytown, Drogheda
