2004:1051 - LONGFORD: Templemichael Glebe, Longford

Testing was undertaken in April 2004 to accompany a planning application. The site consists of four green fields along the northern border of the townland and is bisected by a canalised waterway and a foul sewer main, the former flanked by curvilinear mounds of modern dredging spoil. Underground electrical cables cross part of the site in the south and southwest near an ESB station. The site is bounded on the north by a food factory in Lisnamuck townland and on the east by the N5 Longford bypass. In a field to the west lies the Camlin River (and some distance beyond, Longford town). To the south lie a church and graveyard (13:16), on the opposite side of the 45m2 ESB station, and a putative castle site (13:17).

A total of 353m of trenches were excavated, with sterile natural subsoil encountered at depths of 0.35-0.6m. The testing indicated that, prior to the late post-medieval canalisation of the waterway across the site, much of the site was flooded or boggy. Several geophysical anomalies detected prior to testing proved to be natural iron pan, mid/late 19th-century field drains, or recent topsoil finds. A number of red earthenware planter sherds were recovered from the topsoil near the south edge of the site, in association with mid/late 19th-century finds. This appears to confirm the mid/late 19th-century date for a formal garden that survives as earthworks and a remnant boundary wall and which is located just to the south and off the development site. Map evidence suggests the garden dates to between 1837 and 1880. No significant archaeology was unearthed anywhere on the site.

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