County: Tipperary Site name: GORTMAKELLIS (Site 42)
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 03E0582
Author: Neil Fairburn, for Judith Carroll Network Archaeology Ltd.
Site type: House - 19th century
Period/Dating: Modern (AD 1750-AD 2000)
ITM: E 608606m, N 643847m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.545894, -7.873110
This report presents the results of Phase 2 excavations at Site 42 carried out on behalf of South Tipperary County Council in advance of construction of the N8 Cashel Bypass and N74 Link Road. The scheme involves a 6km bypass route of the town and a 2km link road of the N74.
Phase 1 pre-construction testing by Anne Marie Lennon in 2002 (Excavations 2002, No. 1704, 02E0286) located the corner foundations of a stone-built structure. The structure was recorded on the first-edition OS map but was no longer visible. Phase 2 work carried out in April 2003 consisted of the full topsoil-stripping of an area around the structure and its investigation.
The topsoil-stripping revealed the foundations for a rectangular house with associated features. The main house foundations were c. 11m by 5.7m, with an orientation, along its length, of east-north-east/west-south-west. The foundations were only one to two courses thick and were faced on both the inside and outside of the structure. The larger stones were used on the outer faces and smaller roughly shaped stones were used as a core. Projecting out of the north-western side of the house was a possible path or wall foundation, which contained a large piece of worked masonry which had a metal fitting embedded in it (possibly used originally in a railway track); this feature led into a D-shaped shallow pit, which was flat bottomed and had stones lining its sides in the north-west; this could possibly have been a step down into the feature, though the function of the feature is unclear, but it may have been for water storage.
All of the artefacts and evidence recovered suggest a 19th-century date for the house.
Cocyn Uchaf, Moelfre, Anglesey, Wales
