County: Dublin Site name: KITCHENSTOWN
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 03E0073
Author: Finola O'Carroll, for CRDS Ltd.
Site type: No archaeology found
Period/Dating: N/A
ITM: E 715520m, N 760418m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.580903, -6.255452
Test excavations were carried out along the proposed line of a fibre-optic cable linking an existing mast to the recently laid cable network along the road at Kitchenstown, Co. Dublin. The site of the proposed ground cable lies between the road and a compound containing a broadcast mast, on Knockbrack Hill, an area of archaeological potential immediately adjacent to an archaeological complex (SMR 4:12), a hilltop enclosure and a barrow cemetery. The site had previously been disturbed by the laying of an ESB cable, which had not been subjected to monitoring, and, following an assessment of the impact of this previous work, the line of the cable was also examined.
The proposed line for the fibre-optic cable was close to the existing ESB duct line. At the time of investigation, the ESB cable had been removed by the company, which had inserted it without planning permission. Therefore, it was agreed that it was more practical to reopen the full length of the ESB line and to insert the NTL fibre-optic cable into the trench, thus avoiding having to dig a second trench. This was contingent upon there being no archaeological features revealed in the trench.
The full length of the trench containing the ESB cable was opened where it traversed the compound. It was excavated to the interface of the ‘B’ horizon and subsoil, and the line of the ESB cutting was revealed. The trench was, on average, 0.45m deep and 1.25m wide. The only features noted were two field drains running diagonally across the trench. Each was 0.2m wide and filled with angular stones less than 0.08m long. The ESB duct lay in a trench which was mostly along the centre of this cutting. It was 0.35m wide and a further 0.25m deep. It had not cut any archaeological features.
In order to examine the line of the trench which would be dug for the fibre-optic cable from the road to the compound, seven test-pits were dug along the route across the field outside the compound to the road. Each pit was 1.25m2 and averaged 0.45m in depth. All work was carried out using a 1.2m-wide ditching bucket attached to a three-and-a-half-ton machine. Nothing of archaeological interest was noted in any of the pits. A single piece of struck flint was recovered during the monitoring of the digging of the line of the new cable, recovered from the relatively level area at the base of the hill, close to a deep field boundary ditch, and this, combined with the fact that the field had been ploughed in the past, makes it uncertain as to where the struck flint may have derived from.
Neither the testing of the line of the cable nor the monitoring of the digging of the slit-trench for it revealed anything of archaeological significance.
Unit 4, Dundrum Business Park, Dundrum, Dublin 14
