County: Louth Site name: KILPATRICK
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 17:44 Licence number: 02E1382
Author: Kieran Campbell
Site type: No archaeology found
Period/Dating: N/A
ITM: E 695178m, N 787048m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.824219, -6.554345
Monitoring took place on 8 and 15 September 2002 of topsoil-stripping and the excavation of foundations for a house at Kilpatrick, 3km south of the town of Ardee.
The field in which the proposed house site lay is known as the Chapel Field, and the chapel referred to was a short-lived structure that was the immediate predecessor of St Catherine’s Catholic church at Ballapousta, in the same parish but in the adjoining townland of Drakestown. This general area is known as Ballapousta, but the name is not attached to any townland. MacIvor (1948, 311) relates the local tradition that the chapel fell down while the first Mass was being said. A bird picked up a piece of debris and flew to the site where a new church, St Catherine’s, was built. The first St Catherine’s Church at Ballapousta was built in 1787 and was a simple barn-like structure with a thatched roof, which was replaced by the present building in 1831. This would date the chapel in the Chapel Field, if not to 1787, then certainly to within a short time before this date.
The 18th-century chapel is believed to have stood in the south-east corner of the field, at the opposite end of the field and c. 300m from the development site. Nothing was noted in the ploughsoil on the supposed site of the chapel to indicate a previous structure there. The topsoil-stripping and trench excavation revealed only natural subsoil on the house site.
References
MacIvor 1948 Townland survey of County Louth: Drakestown. Journal of the County Louth Archaeological Society 11 (4), 309–13.
6 St Ultan’s, Laytown, Drogheda, Co. Louth
