County: Clare Site name: BALLAGHFADDA EAST (BGE 3/20/7)
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 02E1193
Author: Graham Hull, Margaret Gowen & Co. Ltd.
Site type: Road - road/trackway
Period/Dating: Modern (AD 1750-AD 2000)
ITM: E 534401m, N 674631m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.818655, -8.973193
This site was examined as part of Bord Gáis Éireann’s Pipeline to the West. It is to the north-west of the town of Clarecastle. The site was part of a stone-walled track that ran south-west from the N18 road for a distance of c. 244m. A 10m-long section of the track was excavated.
The walls flanking the metalled surface stood to 0.8m high and were 0.75m wide, composed of randomly laid, unworked, limestone blocks. The blocks were typically 0.25m by 0.15m by 0.1m and occasionally 0.65m by 0.3m by 0.2m. The roadway was composed of pale yellowish mortar and concrete, with occasional limestone pieces and gravel. Below this surface was a limestone rubble consolidation layer that included pieces of brick. Clay tobacco pipe pieces and an iron horseshoe were recovered from the surface of the consolidation layer. The roadway had been laid onto fine orange/brown sand that was clearly a natural deposit. Redeposited sand had been mounded against the outer face of one of the flanking walls. This material included 19th- to 20th-century bottle glass and transfer-applied china.
A cartographic and documentary search will be undertaken to tighten the chronology of the trackway. The artefacts can be more closely dated, but archaeological evidence indicates that the trackway, at least in its current form, is late post-medieval; however, the possibility of redefinition of an earlier track cannot be ignored.
2 Killiney View, Albert Road Lower, Glenageary, Co. Dublin
