County: Dublin Site name: GRANGE: Baldoyle (Site 4:4)
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 04E0342
Author: Stuart D. Elder, The Archaeology Company
Site type: Enclosure
Period/Dating: Medieval (AD 400-AD 1600)
ITM: E 723556m, N 740191m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.397398, -6.142111
Test-trenching at a new town development at Grange, Baldoyle, revealed several charcoal-rich features (No. 446, Excavations 2004, 03E1535) and the trenches were subsequently widened into an area measuring some 250m2. A subcircular ditch feature of c. 100m in circumference was noted and a number of sections excavated through it. These sections showed up to seven fills—alternate episodes of silting and slumping—as well as a narrow recut towards the end-of-use phase, and the eventual deliberate backfilling. Rounded ditch terminals and a metalled pathway through the entrance were located on the north side of the site, and a series of three, possibly four, substantial post-holes 2m or so inside the ditch at the entrance represented a probable square-plan gate-tower feature. The enclosure ditch measured c. 30m in diameter by 3m wide by up to 2.3m deep.
Surviving internal features were represented by rubbish pits and linear features, with a single posthole evident towards the centre of the site. The dearth of directly attributable structural features was frustrating, but wide furrows cutting the backfilled ditch and the features within it attested to the intensity of tillage farming since the site went out of use. Artefacts included a fragment of lignite bracelet and a copper-alloy stick pin from pit deposits towards the centre of the site and a socketed iron object from the western terminal of the ditch.
Post-excavation analysis is ongoing, but the site has provisionally been interpreted as a levelled ringfort.
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