County: Cork Site name: ROSTELLAN, Saleen
Sites and Monuments Record No.: CO088-103 Licence number: 04E1174
Author: Margaret McCarthy, Archaeological Services Unit, Department of Archaeology, University College Cork
Site type: Enclosure
Period/Dating: Undetermined
ITM: E 587592m, N 566652m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 51.851941, -8.180098
Pre-planning testing was undertaken within the area of a potential archaeological monument in dense woodland close to Saleen village in east Cork. The land is under state ownership but Cork County Council and Coillte are currently negotiating the redevelopment of the area into housing with associated ancillary works, including the construction of a wastewater treatment plant. The levelled monument is listed as a 'circular enclosure' in the Archaeological Inventory of County Cork: Vol: II (Power et al. 1994) and is depicted as a small circled landscape feature in the 1902 OS map.
Two test-trenches were placed at right angles to each other across the location spot of the 'enclosure'. These were all excavated to a level below the natural subsoil and trenching revealed that no subsurface remains of the monument survive. It is unlikely that the site was a ringfort, as traces of the ditch would have been present in the subsoil. Neither was there any evidence for a bank, but this may have been destroyed when Coillte acquired the wood for plantation. The area was formally part of the Rostellan estate and a number of 19th-century landscape features, including a tower, survive in the vicinity of the site. The monument in question is not shown on the 1842 OS map and it is possible that the circular feature represented on the second edition was also a folly.
