County: Dublin Site name: BALLYMOUNT GREAT
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 21:15 Licence number: 01E0666
Author: Franc Myles, Margaret Gowen & Co. Ltd.
Site type: Cultivation ridges
Period/Dating: Medieval (AD 400-AD 1600)
ITM: E 708371m, N 730269m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.311597, -6.373736
The excavation of the medieval features at Ballymount (Excavations 2001, No. 328) continued into January 2002, where an area measuring 26.6m (north–south) by 3m adjacent to the area excavated in December was reduced to subsoil.
The features excavated related to two distinct phases. The earlier phase, suggested by a series of shallow trenches and gullies, dated to the 13th and 14th centuries, when this area of the Pale would have been subjected to intensive agricultural processes. Although one of the features was ovoid and initially suggested a structure, on excavation it appeared more likely that the features were cut to drain area. A pit containing cattle horns suggested farmstead activity; however, no other finds were recovered, apart from large amounts of locally produced pottery. It seems likely that the pottery was introduced to the gullies to assist drainage.
The later phase of activity related to a large field drain that appears to have been recut as a field boundary. This linear feature extended east–west, the drain component consisting of well-positioned limestone rubble constructed along the base of a sharp cut in the subsoil. Several fragments of handmade brick were recovered from the stones in the drain, suggesting that the feature dated from the period after the destruction of the manor house in 1646. The first-edition OS map depicts the linear extent of the feature as a field boundary, and the feature did not survive above ground by the time of publication of the second edition.
2 Killiney View, Albert Road Lower, Glenageary, Co. Dublin
