County: Fermanagh Site name: TULLY CASTLE
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 172:31 Licence number: AE/02/80
Author: Brian Williams, Environment and Heritage Service: Built Heritage
Site type: Excavation - miscellaneous
Period/Dating: Modern (AD 1750-AD 2000)
ITM: E 612618m, N 856640m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.458111, -7.805391
Tully Castle is on the shore of Lough Erne. It comprises a fortified house and bawn, built between 1610 and 1615 for Sir John Hume of North Berwick. When the Commissioners visited in 1622 they found ‘a bawne of stone and lime 99 feet long, 9 feet broad, 10 feet high, with 4 flankers. There is also within the bawne a strong castle 54 feet long, 19 feet broad, 3 storeys high, covered with thatch.’ There are also references to a village of 24 families lying ‘near unto the bawn’. The excavations were undertaken in the vicinity of the fortified house in order to identify the location of this village, reputed to have been destroyed in the 1641 rebellion.
Fourteen trenches were dug. Trenches 1–10 were opened at the Hassard cottages, 150m south of Tully Castle. No archaeological deposits of pre-18th-century date were discovered. Trenches 11–14 were excavated at the location marked as ‘Tully’ on the first edition of the OS maps of the area. Trenches 11 and 13 were 1m-square test-pits opened to the north and south of cottages at ‘Tully’. No archaeological deposits were present in either trench.
Trench 12, 8m by 1m, was opened alongside a building considered by the owner to be the oldest in the yard. A series of deposits and cuts was present in the trench, representing activities extending back to the 18th century and possibly earlier. It was noticeable that a plinth, on which the cottage stood, was exposed at ground level, well above the base of the trench. Features present within the trench included substantial cut features, mottled clay deposits and an area of metalling, all overlain by a modern rubbish tip. Trench 14 was opened in a field immediately to the east of the cottages and measured 5m by 1m. It revealed a topsoil deposit overlying a more compact clay. A quantity of blackware, some possibly 17th century, along with some sherds of 17th-century earthenwares, was found.
The excavations did not reveal any substantive traces of the village or structures that could be dated to the period 1610–41. Although the trenches around the Hassard cottages revealed nothing to suggest that it had been the site of the village, the excavations at the ‘Tully’ site revealed activity possibly from that period.
5–33 Hill Street, Belfast BT1 2LA
