County: Limerick Site name: LEAHYS (BGE 3/42/1)
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 02E0302
Author: Ken Wiggins, for Margaret Gowen & Co. Ltd.
Site type: Pit
Period/Dating: Prehistoric (12700 BC-AD 400)
ITM: E 523585m, N 651344m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.607971, -9.128209
The site was exposed during monitoring of topsoil-stripping along Section 3 of the Bord Gáis Éireann Pipeline to the West (No. 64, Excavations 2002, 02E0119). The site was discovered on 28 February and was the first archaeological feature to emerge on this phase of the project. It lay on elevated ground c. 200m south of the Shannon and was excavated from 4 to 7 March 2002.
The site consisted of a pit cut by a field drain. The pit was 1.1m long, 1m wide and 0.3m deep. The fill was crumbly, dark grey/brown, charcoal-rich clay containing numerous burnt stone fragments. The northern side of the pit was cut by a drain aligned north-east to south-west. The excavated length of the drain was 3.4m, and it was 0.8–0.9m wide and 0.15m deep. The fill was soft, grey, silty clay with no inclusions; toward the northern end the feature contained a number of flat limestone packing stones. Two stake-holes were found in the subsoil on either side of the drain, measuring 70mm by 60mm by 55mm deep and 50mm by 45mm by 60mm deep.
No other in situ material was found on the site. The presence of burnt stone material in the pit fill indicates that the feature was related to a fulacht fiadh, for which no other evidence was revealed inside the limits of the Bord Gáis Éireann wayleave.
2 Killiney View, Albert Road Lower, Glenageary, Co. Dublin
