County: Carlow Site name: KILREE, Bagenalstown
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 03E1404
Author: Emmet Stafford, Stafford McLoughlin Archaeology
Site type: Field system
Period/Dating: Prehistoric (12700 BC-AD 400)
ITM: E 669707m, N 660587m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.691937, -6.968839
Testing of a proposed housing development site to the south of the Royal Oak Road was undertaken during September 2003. The proposed development encompasses a large enclosure, SMR 16:39, which is known only from aerial photography. Testing was undertaken following the geophysical survey of the enclosure and four other areas of the site, under licence 02R124, to establish whether archaeological features associated with the recorded enclosure were present within the area of the proposed first phase of the development.
Evidence of a disused field system, mainly comprising furrows and shallow field boundaries, was uncovered throughout the site. The field system was largely oriented along and perpendicular to a south-west to north-east line. The date of this field system is unknown.
Subsoil-cut features of possible archaeological significance were also uncovered in several areas throughout the site, most notably in Trench 5, to the south-east of the enclosure, where a chert core was recovered from a possible post-hole. A struck tool of similar quality chert was recovered from topsoil in Trench 8 approximately 50m south-west of this feature.
Monitoring of groundworks throughout the site and controlled topsoil-stripping in the vicinity of the known archaeological features has identified further deposits, which will be the subject of an open-plan excavation in 2004.
Unit 4, Enniscorthy Enterprise Centre, Milehouse Road, Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford
