County: Meath Site name: DUNSHAUGHLIN: Drumree Road
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 02E1387
Author: Rosanne Meenan
Site type: No archaeology found
Period/Dating: N/A
ITM: E 696451m, N 752496m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.513590, -6.545753
An assessment was carried out before the submission of a planning application to build a housing development and access road. The site lies on the north-western edge of Dunshaughlin village, straddling the edge of the zone of archaeological potential. There was a possibility that the line of the monastic ditch enclosing the Early Christian foundation of St Seachnaill would be exposed.
The development site is in a rectangular, badly drained field with a gradual slope downward from north to south.
Six trenches tested the site, with evidence of drainage features exposed along the western side. These ran north–south down the site toward a large drain at the south of the site. One drain was exposed in three of the trenches; it was 2m wide and a maximum of 0.8m deep. The fill comprised dark grey soil similar to topsoil and contained fragments of brick and part of clay pipe. A similar drain was exposed in another trench, running parallel to the first and c. 7m to the west; this yielded a fragment of brick.
Nothing of archaeological significance was exposed in any of the trenches. The clay-pipe stem and the fragments of brick suggest an 18th- or 19th-century date.
Roestown, Drumree, Co. Meath
