2001:314 - AQUARIUS WATER PIPELINE, Killinure, Down

During monitoring of topsoil-stripping along the proposed line of the Mourne Conduit Replacement Scheme (Aquarius Project) the remains of a large spread of burnt mound material, c. 14m in diameter, were uncovered within the corridor of the proposed pipeline. As the deposits were within an area under threat from the pipe insertion, excavation was required.

Removal of the burnt mound material revealed a number of subsoil-cut features. Beneath the outer edges of the burnt spread, almost encompassing the mound material, was a long, narrow, D-shaped gully, encompassing an area c. 6.6m by 4.2m. The gully was generally box-shaped in section except within its southern half, where it had become very truncated and more splayed in shape. It ranged in depth from 0.06m at its shallowest southern end to 0.34m within the deepest middle section. Its width ranged from 0.3m to 0.5m.

The main fill of the gully consisted of variations of a black, friable silty clay that was moderately to heavily charcoal-flecked and contained a moderate number of reddened and heat-shattered stones. There also appeared to be a break in the gully as it had begun to curve, where a bank of redeposited subsoil separated the southern portion from the rest of the feature. A narrow charcoal-filled channel, c. 0.05m in diameter, ran through the middle and near the base of the redeposited subsoil bank, giving the impression that this had been a small air or water channel. It was within this area on the northern side of the bank that most of the slag residue material was recovered.

The south-eastern end of the gully terminated against the northern edge of a large, subsoil-cut, rectangular pit, located within the eastern portion of the site. The pit was 2.5m by 1.6m and 0.55m deep, aligned along a north-east/south-west axis. It was box-shaped in section with initially steeply sloping sides that continued to fall vertically towards a flat base. Its primary fill consisted of a black, friable, silty clay that was heavily charcoal-flecked and contained numerous small heat-shattered stones. Two small stake-holes were cut into the south-west corner of the feature, with another two excavated just off the south-east corner of the pit.

A small number of subsoil-cut features were uncovered within the arc of the gully. The most substantial of these, located almost central to the gully, was a large subcircular post-hole, 0.5m by 0.4m in size and 0.3m deep. It was filled with a black, friable clayey silt that was moderately charcoal-flecked and contained numerous fragments of burnt bone. A second, smaller post-hole — 0.3m in diameter, 0.15m deep — was placed adjacent to this larger one and was filled with a similar deposit. The remains of two further sets of double post-holes were uncovered extending in a line westwards towards the internal edge of the gully, 0.6–0.8m apart. All of these were much shallower than the central post-hole, possibly because they did not perform a central structural function or because they had become more truncated in the past.

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