County: Antrim Site name: CARRICKFERGUS: Carrickfergus Castle
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 52:59 Licence number: AE/02/106
Author: John Ó Néill, c/o Centre for Archaeological Fieldwork, School of Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen’s University
Site type: Castle - Anglo-Norman masonry castle
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 741351m, N 887243m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.713384, -5.806217
The 2002 Carrickfergus Castle investigations were within the inner ward of the castle in a building believed to be a magazine constructed in 1859. The excavations took place before the construction of a lift leading into the keep of the castle. The inner ward of the castle has been investigated by excavation on several occasions. Professor Martin Jope, formerly of Queen’s University, excavated a test-trench within the inner ward of the castle in the 1950s. The location of this trench and the results of the excavation were not found among Jope’s notes, and it is assumed that nothing of archaeological significance was encountered (T. McNeill, pers. comm.). A service trench opened within the inner ward of the castle was too narrow to reveal anything of major significance (Nick Brannon, Excavations 1991, No. 4). In 1993 an excavation in a similar location alongside the keep, by Colm Donnelly and Paul McCooey, revealed that the east wall was constructed on a foundation raft of beach boulders in a trench dug into the land surface (Excavations 1993, No. 4).
None of the pre-Ordnance Survey maps of Carrickfergus shows buildings at the site of the proposed lift shaft. The single-storey building in which the excavation took place lies within the inner ward of the castle. Measuring 8.9m by 3m internally, it has 1.45m-thick granite walls. It was built as a magazine following the recommissioning of the castle as the headquarters of the Antrim Artillery after 1855. An ope, linking the magazine to the keep, appears to date from this time. The excavations uncovered a number of structural features that reflected the use of the building as a magazine. Two earlier walls were sealed by activity associated with the magazine. These walls had been inserted through soil levels associated with the inner ward of the castle that had formed across the top of the basal levels of the keep wall, which was partly constructed onto bedrock. A large quantity of prehistoric lithics was recovered from the trench, indicating pre-castle occupation of the promontory.
Belfast, BT7 1NN
