County: Leitrim Site name: FARNAGHT
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 36:21 Licence number: 00E0867
Author: Rosanne Meenan
Site type: Graveyard
Period/Dating: Modern (AD 1750-AD 2000)
ITM: E 612096m, N 790395m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.862872, -7.816103
A FÁS scheme undertook the cleaning-up of the graveyard here, adjacent to the monument marked as ‘Oratory’ on the OS sheet. The monument may represent the remains of a tower-house rather than an ecclesiastical building (Paddy O’Donovan, pers. comm.) There is no evidence to suggest that the graveyard may be Early Christian or medieval.
The final element of the project was the removal of a stretch of crude stone walling, 51m long, along the east side of the graveyard. When the stones were removed it became clear that they had been thrown up from the interior of the graveyard. They were not coursed or mortared and they lay in a matrix of loose dark brown clay. There was no evidence for a foundation or for an earlier wall. The boundary element elsewhere consisted of well-built stone wall or of iron railing, neither of which were disturbed.
The replacement wall will stand approximately 1m high; its foundation trench was 0.4m wide and 0.2m deep. Nothing of archaeological interest was exposed during the excavation of the trench.
Roestown, Drumree, Co. Meath
