County: Kildare Site name: BALLYVONEEN
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 01E0156
Author: Finola O’Carroll, Cultural Resource Development Services Ltd.
Site type: Cultivation ridges and Pit
Period/Dating: Post Medieval (AD 1600-AD 1750)
ITM: E 679890m, N 739779m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.402103, -6.798618
Testing was undertaken in April 2001 in advance of the construction of four timber-framed houses. The site is an L-shaped field 0.5km south of Cloncurry. It is bounded to the east by a public road, with a private laneway to the north, and is near the medieval manorial settlement of Cloncurry.
Test-trenches were excavated by mechanical digger in each of the four house plots. In the first house plot three post-medieval furrows were exposed. Testing within the second house plot revealed two subrectangular pits. The first pit was sectioned to reveal two fills: a brown silty clay layer containing animal bone, overlying a grey marl deposit. No date could be determined.
Testing within the third house plot exposed a natural hollow containing two field ditches, one apparently of medieval date. Modern field consolidation had filled the hollow to the level of the present surface, and covered the features in a layer of topsoil. The first ditch was 1.4m wide and c. 0.5m deep, and was filled with a friable loam containing a single sherd of late medieval pottery. This feature was cut by a second ditch, 0.75 wide and 0.3 deep, which contained a small amount of animal bone. A single post-medieval furrow was exposed in the fourth house plot.
The ditches may have functioned either as drains or boundaries; the second ditch shared its orientation with the post-medieval furrows. Development of the second house plot where the two pits were exposed has been deferred to a later date.
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