County: Tipperary Site name: KILMORE UPPER
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 60:4 Licence number: 00E0682
Author: Brian Hodkinson
Site type: Enclosure
Period/Dating: Undetermined
ITM: E 598447m, N 642464m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.533532, -8.022879
Test-trenching took place in September on two proposed house sites on and adjacent to a suspected enclosure, shown on the first edition OS map. A bank and dyke field boundary was introduced in the area after the first edition but was removed prior to the present work. This boundary seems to have utilised the line of the enclosure.
The southern site, B, was the one that lay within the enclosure, and here testing of the footprint of the house area revealed paired, root-filled ditches, with bank area between, on the northern and western wall lines. The feature was seen again in the septic tank area. It was not possible to see if there was an underlying feature that had been reused. The area uncovered inside the enclosure revealed no features or deposits of significance. The present work has not been able to confirm the existence of the earlier feature.
Site A lay outside the area of the enclosure and was not expected to produce anything. Again the footprint of the house was tested, and along the length of the front wall and part of the side-walls lay a c. 0.1m-thick deposit of burnt stone and charcoal, sandwiched between c. 0.3m of topsoil and the natural subsoil. To define the area, the front wall trench was extended at either end and an extra trench was opened at right angles at roughly the centre point. The deposit appears to measure 14–15m north–south by 7–8m. The deposit is in the lowest and dampest part of the field, and it is tentatively identified as material from a fulacht fiadh. However, more work will have to be done to check this interpretation.
Annaholty, Birdhill, Co. Tipperary
