County: Donegal Site name: EDDRIM GLEBE, Mountcharles
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 99:1(01) Licence number: 01E0087
Author: Joanna Nolan
Site type: Excavation - miscellaneous
Period/Dating: Undetermined
ITM: E 587432m, N 877712m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.647442, -8.194719
It is proposed to use a subrectangular field beside the site of Killymard old church, a medieval church surrounded by a more modern graveyard, as an extension to the existing graveyard. The site was tested by digging three parallel trenches lengthways from north-west to south-east and a fourth perpendicular trench parallel to the existing graveyard wall. The trenches measured c. 30–50m in length; all were 2m wide.
The trenches revealed a fairly shallow clay topsoil, light brown in colour and dry and silty in consistency; general depth ranged from 0.2m to 0.3m. It overlay a grey-brown subsoil with patches of iron pan, orange staining and sparse pockets of gravel.
At the middle of Trench I and at the south-east end of Trench IV and resting in the natural subsoil were deposits of black organic-rich charcoal-stained silty soil; these appeared quite shallow, but those in Trench I were quite linear. It was not clear that these deposits were definitely archaeological in nature, but it was decided to exclude these areas from use in the proposed graveyard.
c/o Bypass office, ‘Thornhill’, Ballyhaunis Road, Claremorris, Co. Mayo
