2000:1076 - WHITEROCK SOUTH, Wexford

The site is on land that is currently undergoing phased development as a luxury housing complex. The overall extent of the site is 5.34ha (13.2 acres). The Phase 1 development, which is nearing completion, covers c. 1.26ha, and the Phase 2 development will cover an area of 0.94ha. Before the commencement of Phase 2, an archaeological appraisal of Phase 1 and monitoring of topsoil-stripping in the area of Phase 2 were to be carried out.

At the request of Dúchas The Heritage Service, an initial visit to Whiterock South was made on 22 September 2000 to assess the archaeological impact of the Phase 1 development and to assess the area of the Phase 2 development prior to any construction work. Phase 1 had proceeded without archaeological appraisal and monitoring, though this had been stipulated as a condition of the planning application.

The nature of the site made an accurate assessment of the impact on potential archaeology very difficult. The site has been developed with six houses fully built, gardens laid out and infrastructure in place. The main services had also been put in place but not connected, and the main sewers had been laid. The green area was used as a storage area for materials and equipment and for the stripped topsoil from this phase of the development.

The exposed ground around the houses was examined, but nothing of an archaeological nature was recorded or recovered. All open trenches, service-related and structural, were examined. These trenches showed the substrata over the whole site to be relatively uniform, consisting of 0.2–0.25m of good-quality topsoil overlying a considerable depth of homogeneous clay.

The proposed green area has suffered heavily from the plant machinery. The land was well drained and did not appear to hold ground-water for long. There was no extant evidence of buried features or deposits of an archaeological nature, nor were there any surface scatters of artefacts that would suggest the presence of archaeology on this site. All disturbance had been limited to the topsoil, and therefore any features or deposits that are buried would remain unaffected by the development.

The Phase 2 development is to the north and north-east of the Phase 1 development. Construction in this area will involve the building of a further eight houses, access roads, services and infrastructure, with a landscaped green area flanking the main site entrance.

A field fence separating two of the fields was quite unusual, and its form was exaggerated by the ditch on its south-eastern face. This field fence was over 3m wide, flat-topped and slightly embanked on the western side. It was stone-faced on the west, and the presence of the ditch gave it an almost-vertical profile to the east. The location of this ditch and its flooded nature may suggest that this feature was the fosse of a moated site. Local tradition has it that the ditch was a pit used for the extraction of clay for the manufacture of bricks. Another element casting doubt on the antiquity of this feature is the presence of ornamental fir trees evenly spaced along this bank.

A series of trenches was opened to define the nature of the bank and to establish its antiquity. Eight test-trenches were excavated in the field to examine the nature of the subsoil adjacent to the field fences on the north-west and south-east. From the examination of these trenches, it appears that, apart from a dry ditch of recent origin inside the bank, there are no features of an archaeological nature associated with the bank. Further testing was carried out on the areas adjacent to the 19th-century field fence to the north-west. No archaeological features were recorded that would substantiate this site as being of medieval date.

The stripping of topsoil for Phase 2 partially exposed archaeological deposits. Primary identification came through the exposure of a small spread of burnt material, which consisted of blackened soil and shattered stones, very similar in form to the firing material from a fulacht fiadh or Bronze Age cooking site. Initial cleaning of this area defined further features and produced some flint artefacts, including one scraper and several struck flakes.

A licence to excavate was granted. The area was defined and demarcated, and monitoring continued. No other features were recorded over the rest of the area being stripped. Subsequent field-walking over the area resulted in the recovery of isolated pieces of struck flint flakes, mostly due east of the main site.

2 Killiney View, Albert Road Lower, Glenageary, Co. Dublin