County: Cavan Site name: RAHARDRUM
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 39:75 Licence number: 02E1049
Author: Donal Fallon, Cultural Resource Development Services Ltd.
Site type: No archaeology found
Period/Dating: N/A
ITM: E 660624m, N 787785m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.836018, -7.078948
Pre-development testing was carried out on a site in Rahardrum, c. 0.5km outside the town of Virginia, before a planning application for the development of seventeen houses. The site consists of two adjacent fields sloping down from the main Kells–Virginia Road to the north-east, meeting the shores of Loch Ramor to the south-west. The development covered an area of c. 3.5ha. The fields are under pasture and are heavily overgrown.
During an initial field inspection a circular enclosure of uncertain date was identified on the lakeshore, at the south-west extent of the develop-ment. This consisted of a raised circular area defined by a shallow ditch (averaging 2m wide and 0.8m deep). The external diameter of the enclosure reached a maximum of 48m. The possible remains of an internal earthen bank, heavily denuded and overgrown, were visible along the northern side of the enclosure (0.4m high, 0.5–1m wide). The southern edge of the enclosure stretches along the lakeshore. The form is suggestive of a ringfort of Early Christian date, and a number of listed monuments of similar date, including a possible crannog, are situated nearby.
The enclosure is not listed on the SMR files and is not identified on the OS maps. However, a comparison of the first- and third-edition OS maps suggests that the feature may have originally been submerged, only exposed by a drop in the level of the lake during the latter half of the 19th century.
It was recommended that the proposed plan of development be altered to allow a 30m buffer zone around the perimeter of the enclosure within which no ground disturbance would take place.
Testing of the remainder of the site took place over four days between 4 and 8 July. A total of 21 trenches were excavated to the depth of subsoil using a tracked machine equipped with a 2m graded ditching bucket. Topsoil was consistently shallow throughout the area of the development, with an average depth of less than 0.4m. No features of archaeological significance were exposed, and the only finds recovered were of modern date.
Unit 4, Dundrum Business Park, Dundrum, Dublin 14
