County: Down Site name: RAHOLP
Sites and Monuments Record No.: DOW031-003 Licence number: AE/03/112
Author: Ruth Logue, Centre for Archaeological Fieldwork
Site type: Kiln - corn-drying and Pit
Period/Dating: Undetermined
ITM: E 753665m, N 847639m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.354239, -5.635923
During October 2003 an excavation was carried out adjacent to Saint Tassach’s Church, located c. 6km north-east of Downpatrick and close to the southern shore of Strangford Lough. Two features had been identified in section during pipe-trench excavation by the Water Service, Department of Regional Development.
The first feature, a drystone-walled construction, survived in the south-east-facing section of the pipe trench. It comprised a roughly coursed chamber, about 1m in height, with the wall tapering slightly inwards towards its top. Around half of the feature had been destroyed during the pipe-trench excavation. It is suggested that the truncated feature represents the remains of a corn-drying kiln.
The second feature was a pit, also in the south-east-facing section of the pipe trench, that was 3.8m in length and 0.7m in depth. No dating evidence was found in association with this feature.
The remainder of the pipe-trench excavation was monitored, for a distance of nearly 60m, but nothing else of archaeological significance was found during this process.
School of Archaeology & Palaeoecology, Queen’s University, Belfast BT7 1NN
