2002:0601 - JAMESTOWN: Ballyogan Road, Dublin

The stripping of a number of fields adjacent to the 15th-century Pale ditch was monitored before the construction of the Ballyogan Recycling Park. Topsoil was stripped using a machine fitted with a toothless grading bucket and a bulldozer, from topsoil onto the top of archaeological features or undisturbed subsoil. Nothing of archaeological significance was uncovered in the fields on either side of the Pale ditch. However, a previously unrecorded portion of the Pale ditch itself was revealed at an existing crossing of the ditch. Despite severe disturbance resulting from previous pipe-laying activity and the construction of the gap itself, evidence, albeit fragmentary, of the northern and southern fosses and the bank survived. These features were not excavated; instead, the exposed portions of the bank and fosses were recorded in plan and in section and then preserved in situ. The fills of the fosses were made up entirely of modern materials.

2 Walnut Rise, Courtlands, Dublin 9