County: Donegal Site name: MALIN MORE
Sites and Monuments Record No.: DG089-002---- and DG089-003---- Licence number: 02E1433
Author: Martin A. Timoney
Site type: Field boundary and Enclosure
Period/Dating: Prehistoric (12700 BC-AD 400)
ITM: E 551049m, N 882706m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.690092, -8.759230
Óstán Ghleann Cholm Cille Teo, Malin More, Glencolumbkille, Co. Donegal, has been developing an eighteen-hole golf course on a 130-acre site, about two-fifths of which is bogland, on the exposed peninsula of Malin More, Co. Donegal, since 2002 (Excavations 2002, No. 429, 02E1081, 02E1433).
The site can be considered in four sections. The Western Section, where works have not yet begun, and the Rear of Hotel Section are on a hillside rising from the road through Malin More. To the east of these is a Valley Section, through which the road to Glencolumbkille passes. To the east again is the Eastern Section.
Prior to these works there were two known monuments within the development area, an enclosure site, behind the hotel, and pre-bog field walls in the Eastern Section. Testing located a pre-bog stone wall, but the enclosure is still not evident. Monitoring continued in 2003.
Monitoring of works in the Rear of Hotel Section and examination of reopened old drains has revealed no archaeology. The profile is one of a thin scraw, soft bog of anything from 0.2 to 1.4m in depth, a glacially deposited heavy sticky clay from as little as 10–300mm in depth, and then the underlying glacially shattered pre-Cambrian metamorphic rock. The pre-bog surface has many stones embedded in it. The variations in depth of bog is due to variations of slope and consequential differential bog growth and extensive turf cutting here.
Works for a long narrow drainage trench, a holding pond and lesser drains in the Valley Section were monitored in May 2003. The expected continuation of pre-bog field walls from the Eastern Section did not materialise.
Works in the Eastern Section revealed hints of a second pre-bog field wall, 60–70m to the south of that already noted. Proposed adjacent tees and greens were moved a sufficient distance so as not to impinge on these walls. Neither wall has been exposed sufficiently to describe, other than as a tumble of local stones, 2m wide and at most four courses high. Both walls can be seen to cross this lower section of the golf course on an east–west alignment and are 130m and 150m long within this property; logically they could extend quite a distance to the east, but there is no sign of them in the works to the west, on the west side of the Glencolumbkille road, unless they curve and are represented by current walls. A third parallel wall may be present on the shoulder of the hill further south overlooking the Malin More valley, where there are portal and court tombs and pre-bog walls. A long drain up the length of the fairways and several minor drains did not expose any walls on the slope of the hill.
Monitoring will continue in 2004.
Bóthar an Chorainn, Keash, Co. Sligo
