County: Monaghan Site name: MONAGHAN TOWN BYPASS
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 04E0106
Author: Shane Delaney, Irish Archaeological Consultancy Ltd, 8 Dungar Terrace, Dœn Laoghaire, Co. Dublin.
Site type: Testing
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 688918m, N 762584m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.605548, -6.656417
Testing commenced at the site on 10 March and was completed by 19 April 2004. It was carried out using one 20-tonne and one 18-tonne machine, each equipped with a 2m-wide toothless bucket. A total of 5369m of linear test-trenches were opened across the 11ha site. This translates to a testing area of 8.7% of the proposed route.
Offset trenches were excavated from a centre-line at regular intervals of 20m within the area of road-take. Additional parallel centre-lines and/or offsets were excavated in areas where the road-take was particularly wide or wherever it was felt necessary in the interest of establishing the nature and potential of archaeological material.
The route crossed (from south to north) the townlands of Corlat, Aghnasedagh, Latlorcan, Annahagh, Tullyhirm and Coolshannagh. Five archaeological sites were recorded during the testing programme.
Site 1, Tullyhirm 1 (Chainage 0200), was a possible cooking pit, 0.3m in diameter. It may be post-medieval and was fully excavated at the time of exposure. Site 2, Tullyhirm 2, was a burnt mound (8m by 4m by 0.1m deep) at the edge of the land-take. Site 3, Annahagh 1, was a burnt mound (5m by 5m by 0.1m deep) within the land-take. Site 4, Annahagh 2, was a burnt mound (10m by 10m by 0.25m deep) within the land-take. Site 5, Aghnasedagh 1, contained early modern activity and field drains over an area 10m by 10m.
Test-trenching was carried out on behalf of Monaghan County Council and the National Roads Authority.
