County: Donegal Site name: SPEENOGUE: Grianán of Aileach
Sites and Monuments Record No.: DG047-012001- Licence number: 03E0996
Author: Christopher Read, North West Archaeological Services Ltd.
Site type: Ringfort - cashel
Period/Dating: Early Medieval (AD 400-AD 1099)
ITM: E 635600m, N 921106m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 55.036209, -7.443091
Monitoring of preventative demolition works was carried out at the Grianán of Aileach, Speenogue, Co. Donegal. The Grianán of Aileach consists of a substantial restored cashel situated within the enclosing banks of an earlier hillfort and in close proximity to a prehistoric tumulus and a holy well. The site is known historically as the seat of the northern UÃ N»ill and has many historical and legendary associations. The walls of the cashel are up to 10m wide and 5m high, with three different levels of terrace connected by stairs on the internal face. The cashel, in ruins for centuries, was fully restored in the 1870s.
The current monitoring brief concerned a portion of the cashel’s west-facing wall that had collapsed. The collapsed area measured 8m in width and consisted of a substantial amount of debris. The monitoring included both the sifting through of the collapse for archaeological materials or artefacts and the monitoring of demolition works required to stabilise the wall prior to reconstruction. While the majority of the existing structure dates to 19th-century restoration or more recent repair jobs, the possibility of revealing original stonework and subsequently related materials or artefacts remained a possibility. Throughout the entire process of both sifting through the collapsed material and the removal of demolished portions, a considerable amount of modern debris and rubbish was revealed. These included cigarette butts and crisp bags, indicating that most of the collapsed/demolished material was part of recent repair work. This was confirmed verbally by the Dúchas workers and engineer, who were very familiar with the site and the extent of recent works.
In one small portion of the wall, in the very centre of the collapsed section, 0.9m in from the wall’s outer edge and roughly 0.5m above the external ground level, some 19th-century finds, including bottle glass and a clay-pipe stem, were retrieved. It is likely that these finds date to the original reconstruction of the cashel in the 1870s. No portion of the cashel’s original construction was encountered or indeed impacted upon by either the collapse or the demolition. No archaeological features or finds were revealed during the course of the monitoring.
Cloonfad Cottage, Cloonfad, Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim
