County: Fermanagh Site name: DONAGH
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: AE/03/74
Author: Peter Moore, Centre for Archaeological Fieldwork
Site type: Church and Graveyard
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 639787m, N 829896m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.216417, -7.389972
An excavation at Donagh, Co. Fermanagh, was undertaken in advance of the construction of a single private residential dwelling on a site near a ruined medieval church between 31 March and 2 April 2003.
A mechanically excavated trench revealed a layer containing frequent large stones. After the trench was cleaned, a bluey-yellow clay–sand subsoil was uncovered. However, several further features were also visible. In the north-west-facing section of the trench a roughly U-shaped gully was recorded, which had been truncated by the mechanical excavator. The fill of this cut resembled topsoil, in that it was a rich dark-brown friable loam with small stones. A stone feature was also cleaned and investigated. No bonding material was visible between any of the stones, and the stones were interpreted as a natural outcrop. Furthermore, the foundation cuts for the garage provided a section that showed that the site has been much levelled, with the original topsoil diving steeply towards the small stream that is situated towards the east of the site. Therefore, the possibility that the site was partly levelled using stones would seem to be the most likely explanation for the features encountered by the investigation.
A second trench was opened manually, to the immediate north-west of the other trench. Two modern agricultural features, present as gullies, were recorded. Each contained clay-pipe stems.
None of the features encountered during the investigations suggest an association with the medieval church.
School of Archaeology & Palaeoecology, Queen’s University, Belfast BT7 1NN, for the Environment and Heritage Service: Built Heritage
