County: Dublin Site name: CLONARD OR FOLKSTOWN GREAT
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 02E0298
Author: Emmet Byrnes, Margaret Gowen & Co. Ltd.
Site type: House - Bronze Age
Period/Dating: Bronze Age (2200 BC-801 BC)
ITM: E 717818m, N 763999m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.612565, -6.219404
Excavation was carried out on a site at Clonard or Folkstown Great, Co. Dublin, from 19 March to 5 April 2002, as part of the Bord Gáis Éireann Pipeline to the West project (Section 6: Gormanston to Ballough). The site, identified during monitoring of topsoil-stripping, was recorded as a possible hearth with associated post-holes and other cut features.
The excavation revealed the remnants of a circular structure (a round house with a porch-like entrance), a small feature with a marked concentration of stake-holes nearby and two outlying hearths.
The round house survived only partly in ground-plan and would originally have measured 7m in maximum diameter. A double ring of seven post-holes represented the perimeter wall, with a porch-like entrance, 0.92m wide, to the south-east. The entrance consisted of an arrangement of four large post-holes, two internal and two external, with two parallel slot-trenches between them, and two stake-holes. With the exception of a single feature that may have been the very base of a post-hole, there was no significant surviving evidence of internal structural supports, divisions or any other form of screen within the house.
A number of features were also revealed to the south-east and west of the house. These included five natural depressions, or shallow irregular cuts, in the subsoil, in which deposits of charcoal-flecked habitation soil had accumulated. Two concentrations of some 30 stake-holes were also identified to the west of the house. They formed an arrangement extending over an area measuring 1.5m by 0.5m, with two apparent concentrations. The more coherent concentration formed a half-oval-shaped feature, 0.62m in diameter. This is interpreted as an inverted basket-like structure. There were also the two outlying hearths, to the south-west of the round house.
Finds from the house included a small, polished porcellanite axehead, five flint waste flakes and angular fragments, and three sherds of prehistoric pottery, putatively dated to the Middle Bronze Age (c. 1600–1200 BC).
2 Killiney View, Albert Road Lower, Glenageary, Co. Dublin
